Just this afternoon I finished Professor Layton and the Curious Village for the DS. It is a quaint puzzler with quite a bit of charm. You take the role of the renown puzzle solver Professor Layton and his apprentice Luke as they travel to a curious village whose residents are all infatuated with riddles and logic games. Your original purpose in visiting is to assist a woman in finding her late husband’s hidden treasure, the Golden Apple, and by doing so, securing his vast estate and fortune. As events unfold and more mysteries present themselves, you find yourself in the middle of something much larger than you had anticipated.

The thing I probably appreciated the most about this game, is that despite how random and out of place all the puzzles seems at first, by the end they actually make sense. Having that context really completes the game for me. The resolved story behind it all is a delight, even if I deduced the biggest of the mysteries towards the beginning of play. There are 120 puzzles in the village, and solving them all took me a bit over ten hours. I explored and doubled back a lot to make sure I didn’t miss anything along the way, even though the village is not very large and there are not too many inhabitants. If you do miss a puzzle here or there, there is a shack where lost puzzles are stored for you to solve; only one puzzle was ever left there for me. Not all puzzles need to be finished to complete the story; only around 80 or 90 need to be solved to find the Golden Apple. By completing certain requirements, bonuses are unlocked revealing 15 more puzzles, and every week a new one can be downloaded.

There is a bit of animation in the game, and I wish there was more. The style of animation was very calming and soft, and I relished it after so much anime influenced visuals. There is basically one theme song that plays the whole time, and some variation could have been implemented in that respect. As for as control, the stylus is used for everything. Outside of puzzles you only need to touch people to speak, and click a shoe on your HUD and a direction to move. Puzzles are solved either by clicking a button which takes you to an answer screen that allows you to write the letters or number in a field that recognizes your strokes, which works well enough, or by circling or clicking an answer on the screen. A gripe here is that sometimes you will click or circle a choice and then need to hit a submit button to finalize your answer, but sometimes it recognizes it instantly, even if you just accidently tapped the screen while thinking. Also, in most puzzles you are allowed to write on the screen and use it as a note pad to aid in your deductions, but sometimes for no reason that I can come up with, it doesn’t allow this.

A sequel is on the way and I am anxiously awaiting its arrival. The replay value in this is minimal, except to test your friends as you can bring up any puzzle you have encountered. The story and puzzles blend nicely and often present quite the challenge even for college hardened brains like my own. I recommend this title to anyway that enjoys puzzles and riddles and other mind benders.

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