Product Description

In the curious village of St. Mystere, townsfolk greet each other with rebuses, lock their doors with sliding puzzles and hide their secrets within brainteasers. When a wealthy baron passes away, his will reveals an elusive treasure hidden someplace inside the village. Now it`s up to Professor Layton to untangle St. Mystere`s riddles and puzzles, find the hidden treasure and crack the case. As Professor Layton, you`ll tackle over 130 puzzles as you unravel the mysteries of the village. Puzzles range from mazes and riddles to logic and sliding puzzles. Fully voiced animated scenes bring the story to life, while the funny and eccentric villagers and the classic, hand-drawn art provide a stylish charm that will appeal to all.

• Touch Screen controls make working through puzzles a snap
• New puzzles are available weekly for download via Nintendo WFC
• 130 puzzle
• Touch Screen controls
• New puzzles are available weekly for download via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection
• Fully voiced animated scenes

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #35 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Nintendo
• Published on: 2008-02
• Released on: 2008-11-07
• ESRB Rating: Everyone
• Platform: Nintendo DS
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .63" h x 4.97" w x 5.74" l, .25 pounds

Features

• 130 puzzles
• Touch Screen controls
• New puzzles are available weekly for download via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection
• Fully voiced animated scenes

Manufacturer's Description
Amazon.co.uk
Nominated as one of the top handheld games of the year by the 2007 Japanese Game Awards, Professor Layton and the Curious Village sets players loose in a Victorian dream world as you and your guide, Professor Layton, explore a quirky Victorian village where everything is a puzzle.

Puzzle-solving fun on your DS

Something is Odd in St. Mystere
In the curious village of St. Mystere, townsfolk speak to each other in riddles, lock their doors with sliding puzzles and hide their secrets within brainteasers. When the wealthy Baron Augustus Reinhold passes away, his will reveals a hidden treasure in the village of St. Mystere. Unable to locate the treasure themselves, the baron's family calls upon renowned puzzle expert Professor Layton and his apprentice, Luke, for help. Upon the pair's arrival, their search for the treasure is interrupted by the suspicious death of another member of the Reinhold family. Now with two mysteries on their hands, Professor Layton and Luke must work their way through the village's many puzzles, riddles and brainteasers to find the truth.

How to progress through the game
The storyline and puzzles are tightly integrated, so that as you explore the world and progress through the adventure, you will encounter more and more puzzles. Many of the puzzles are new to the North American release.

• As Professor Layton, players tackle more than 130 puzzles as they unravel the mysteries of the village. Challenges range from mazes and riddles to logic and sliding puzzles, many of which are new for the North American release. Touch-screen controls make working through puzzles a snap for players of all skill levels, and as a special bonus new puzzles are available weekly for download for the first six months following game release via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection.
• Unlike other puzzle-driven titles, Professor Layton is the first to offer a story, cast of characters and style that are just as strong as the game play. Fully voiced animated scenes bring the story to life, while the funny and eccentric villagers and the classic, hand-drawn art provide a stylish charm that will appeal to gamers and non-gamers alike.

Screenshots

Enjoy logic-based puzzles. View larger.

Spatial-oriented puzzles. View larger.

And all puzzles utilize your stylus. View larger.

Product Description
In Professor Layton and the Curious Village, you'll tackle over 130 puzzles as you unravel the mysteries of the village. Puzzles range from mazes and riddles to logic and sliding puzzles. Touch Screen controls make working through puzzles fun for players of all skill levels, and new puzzles are available weekly for download via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Fully voiced animated scenes bring the story to life, while the eccentric villagers and the hand-drawn art provide a charm that appeals to gamers and non-gamers alike.

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Customer Reviews

One of the best games on the DS
I completely agree with all of the positive reviews on here and would like to also highly recommend this game as it is amazing. If you imagine a point-and-click murder mystery in the style of the classic Broken Sword or the more recent Phoenix Wright games and mix it with the puzzle elements of the best selling Brain Training games, then you will have some idea what to expect here.

Don't expect an easy game here though as even the puzzles early on take a lot of thinking about and will have you clicking on the Hints button! Most puzzles are solved by using just common sense and the answer will suddenly click and you'll be kicking yourself for not seeing it before. As well as some truly brain-teasing puzzles, there are also some of the best videos - with full spoken audio - that I have seen on the DS and it all adds to the story and will make you want to keep playing to solve the mystery.

Overall this is without a doubt one of the best games on the DS and is one that everyone will enjoy regardless of your age or gender. Just be prepared to get addicted to it!

A Victorian brain workout.
The DS has excelled in bringing us puzzle games, and this is a great new spin on a well established idea.

Professor Layton's Curious Village is a series of puzzles which range from pretty easy to annoyingly tricky. This isn't a game for young children as some of the games might be a tad complex, but it should appeal to everyone from the age of around 10 upwards. My wife has been addicted to this game and even after completing it felt compelled to keep playing to unlock the last few remaining puzzles.

Most of the puzzles are based on very simple principles and seem easy at first - it's only after a few attempts at trying to get the worm into the middle of an apple, or trying to get equal amounts of liquid into a couple of jugs that you realise that this could be quite time consuming!

The puzzles are linked together by means of a plot to uncover the secret of the village and the late Baron Augustus Reinhold. By the end of the game you find out the secret and what starts to seem like a gimmicky story is tied up rather nicely.

Graphically the game impresses. With animated sequences and Victorian style quirky artwork, the game looks unique. The mockney accent of Luke is a bit annoying, but not enough to put you off!

In a nutshell: If you like a cerebral workout and brain training feels a bit old-hat, then this is a fun way to exercise the grey cells. At times you'll want to throw the damn game out of the window, but it's well worth the "eureka!" moment when you solve something you've spent ages trying to figure out!

Good But Curiously Lacking...
I was very excited about getting this game, partly because I love a good puzzle challenge and because I'd heard great things about the storyline, characters etc. Well as far as the puzzles go it gets full marks. The initial puzzles aren't too taxing and they progress nicely to being pretty tricky. There's a fair share of "dur! I should have seen that coming!" puzzles as well as some plain old hard slog ones. You do need to have studied GCSE Maths for some of the harder ones (area of a triangle anyone?!) and remember your fractions, but this applies to only a minority of them so don't let that put you off.
The graphics are lovely, particularly the short animated sequences with speaking parts that appear throughout the game (which you can watch again once you've unlocked the bonuses).
So where did it fall down? Well it has to be on the 'story'. I won't give it away (unlike some reviewers! tut tut!!! Amazon please remove these!!), however I did 'guess' pretty early on. As for interaction, well I don't really know what some reviewers are referring to when they talk about this because there really isn't all that much. Yes you get to chat to the other characters, but that's purely to give you a puzzle or tell you to go somewhere or visit another character (in fact it's pretty similar to the interaction in The Sims: Castaway). I was also annoyed by not being always being allowed to wander where I chose. I felt this was my choice to get wrong if I wanted to, not be hand-held to go in the right direction.
I'd definitely recommend this game for some fun puzzling and as a lovely distraction, however being fair they could have released it as a 'puzzle only' game presented by the Professor, as the background story is pretty irrelevant. For interaction, brain power and lateral thinking, you're better off with Phoenix Wright/Appollo Justice as these have very in-depth characters and storylines, and are happy to let you make your own mistakes in the quest for the truth. They also take considerably longer to play.