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.

Where was I...?

Well, the office is more or less set up… not comfortable, but it’s a place to work. New computer is a horror story I won’t put here. I didn’t want this to be a personal blog where I whine about my life.

I want things to change in my life though – I want them to move forward. To this end, I’m attempting to acquire useful skills for a career in the games industry. I’ve been learning programming, scripting, modding – reading every book on game design I can get my hands on… along with some sketching and short story writing (slow going, but I’m making the attempt)

This blog is part of that – I want to document my efforts, and also to put here my observations, on design generally, as well as games.

My observations on Ikea, briefly, so I’m not leaving people in suspense: the way it’s arranged makes me think of the way sets are arranged for other media; film, theatre, games, whatever. It needs to be aesthetic, it needs to be practical to your specific purpose but it also needs to appear as though it would be practical as a living space, even though it isn’t really used for that. (in the case of Ikea, it not only to highlight the furniture itself, which they’re trying to sell, and lead the potential buyer to imagine how it could be placed in their own home, but to draw you through the store, round that one-way system they have. It includes those little detours where they build a flat.) Very clever. There are books that have been recommended to me about this… it will have to be investigated further.

I have been playing games – I started Prince of Persia for PS3. It’s ok, I’m playing it on casual – it’s far less frustrating than many other games due to the idea that you can’t actually die...
I’ve renewed my subscription to World of Warcraft – gotta love those seasonal quests!
I’ve been watching J. play The Force Unleashed – I’ve not been impressed enough to pick it up myself – what’s the point of being a bastard when that’s what the game expects? It also looks pretty repetitive, though the first little bit playing as Darth Vader looks fun.
Batman: Arkham Asylum is awesome – J’s already played through, so now we’re gonna go through together – maybe I’ll collect achievements or something to make it a little different… though I won’t get them all unless I play it through on each difficulty, which I don’t plan on…

Anyway, that’s more or less what I wanted to say last time, but got cut off… Next time will be better, I swear.