Professor Layton will Steal Your Life

I picked up a second hand game for the Nintendo DS on last week. “Professor Layton and the Curious Village”. It is a collection of 130 puzzles wrapped around a plot where you have to find “The Golden Apple”, left in a legacy by a mysterious baron. The adventure is set in a Japanese version of France, in a village called St. Mystere and with a cast of eccentrics that also seem to be getting murdered and disappeared one by one.  And everyone you meet has a puzzle they want you to solve.

Some of them are easy, some more tricky. I’ve done 40 or so puzzles so far and I’ve only found one that I’ve not been able to crack, and that is just because I’m too lazy to work it out the hard way. The game is great fun. I really like the way that the puzzles have no time limit, so I can ponder them at my leisure.  It has taken far more of my time than I should spend playing games, and is a nice illustration of the way that games are developing to bring in a wider range of players. I can strongly recommend it.