Professor Layton and the Curious Village - a review

I’m still enjoying a few remaining puzzles in this game, however; I’ve finished the story and feel like if I don’t remember to update this blog, it will become forgotten entirely (again).

Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a puzzle/adventure game by the Japanese developer Level-5 for the Nintendo DS.

The story begins as the Professor, an apparently world-renowned puzzle-solver, and his assistant Luke are called to the village of St Mystere by Lady Dahlia Reinhold to solve a mystery written into the will of her husband, the late Baron Reinhold; it challenges any would-be heirs to find ‘The Golden Apple’, promising that any who do will inherit his fortune. The aim is to navigate the story and solve this mystery among others; though it would probably be a very short game indeed if every resident of St Mystere didn’t insist on giving a puzzle to be solved before they will speak to Layton or Luke.

The first thing that hit me about this game is the art; charming and beautiful in a way that’s both as distinctly Japanese as Studio Ghibli but with a wonderful European flavour . The game is presented in the style of a point and click adventure with still pictures to be clicked on in order to find hidden puzzles and ‘hint coins’ (a currency to be bartered for clues - when it’s just not your kind of puzzle) with beautifully animated cut-scenes throughout.

The story is simple, but sweet and is interesting enough of itself that I wasn’t skipping past it to get to the next puzzle – helpfully also, there is a short recap every time you start the game, so you never forget where you are.

Of course, your appreciation of the game will still be somewhat limited if you’re not a puzzle fan. If you are a puzzle fan then you’re in luck. There are, according to Wikipedia, a total of 135 brain teasers throughout the game. These are of so many assorted kinds; from numbers, to shape recognition, to chess, that there is a puzzle for every sort of problem-solving brain. You will need certain puzzles to be solved before you can progress through the story, but far from all of them – they’re just there for your enjoyment and to collect items for further puzzles (or to assemble a handy coin-finding robot-dog) – and thanks to the aforementioned hint coins, there’s no need to resort to frustrated internet searches for the solution if you really don’t get it.

The criticisms I have of this game are really very small in comparison to its obvious virtues; Luke’s ‘English’ accent for example sounds a little too much like Dick Van Dyke on helium for my taste, and towards the end of the game, wandering around the village and pointing at everything you see in hope of finding those one or two missed puzzles does become tiring.

However, for any puzzle fan in need of a game to fill a few spare hours, I cannot recommend this highly enough.