Growing up with a DS, I’d always had a passing interest in the Professor Layton series, but I didn’t get a chance to experience it until I picked up one of the entries for the 3DS. Years later, I wanted to go back to the origin of the series to see what the debut had to offer.
Fundamentally, Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a mix between a narrative point-and-click adventure and puzzle game. This game was inspired, in part, by the Phoenix Wright series and this comes through in the moment-to-moment gameplay which consists of navigating the environment to progress the story and solving a variety of logic puzzles along the way. The Curious Village was released when the Brain Age series was becoming a household name and those games probably factored into the puzzle focus in the Layton series.
The Curious Village exudes charm through its atmosphere and gives the game a sense of coziness that pervades the experience. The art direction is a major contributing factor to this and is reminiscent of classic French animation like The Triplets of Belleville. The music perfectly complements the art and is a moody mixture of piano, accordion, and violin. All of the characters are drawn in an exaggerated style, even minor ones, making up for the relative lack of personality that the protagonists (Layton and Luke) are generally pretty flat themselves.
The puzzles themselves are varied and, in general, well constructed. Some are simple riddles, others involve manipulating blocks around constrained areas, and others are just straight up math questions. Sometimes, the hints don’t reveal enough leading to an unsatisfying guessing approach, but genuinely solving a puzzle that characters in the game were moaning about is always fun. There are also some odd minigames that I can’t stop thinking about. Namely, the bizarre tamagotchi-esque sim where you decorate Layton and Luke’s bedrooms in an effort to make them happy.
The major gripes I have with the game have to do with the puzzle solving UI. This game desperately needs a whiteboard feature. Oftentimes, I would find myself pulling out a physical whiteboard to take notes while working on puzzles and this is something that could have easily been implemented with the touch screen on the system. Once you have the solution to a puzzle, inputting the numbers or letters to answer it feels like its own puzzle. Single strokes are recorded as inputs so adding an “E” to your answer is needlessly complicated.
The game’s story is the vehicle that moves you from puzzle to puzzle and, for what it is, I found it to be quite satisfying. Like the gameplay itself, the narrative is a series of puzzles in the form of mysteries that are gradually revealed. The resolution to some of the mysteries feels obvious by the time you reach them, but this is mostly due to appropriate clues being given beforehand. Refreshingly, the character of Flora, who is crucial to the resolution of the story, is actually given some agency of her own rather than being relegated to the damsel in distress as was typical of the time. I don’t want to spoil too much, but the story is quaint, a little sinister, and doesn’t overstay its welcome.
I’m looking forward to seeing what the rest of the DS trilogy has to offer. The Curious Village showcases the charm that the Professor Layton series would be known for. UI gripes aside, any puzzle aficionado or cozy game enjoyer should give this one a shot.
Fundamentally, Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a mix between a narrative point-and-click adventure and puzzle game. This game was inspired, in part, by the Phoenix Wright series and this comes through in the moment-to-moment gameplay which consists of navigating the environment to progress the story and solving a variety of logic puzzles along the way. The Curious Village was released when the Brain Age series was becoming a household name and those games probably factored into the puzzle focus in the Layton series.
The Curious Village exudes charm through its atmosphere and gives the game a sense of coziness that pervades the experience. The art direction is a major contributing factor to this and is reminiscent of classic French animation like The Triplets of Belleville. The music perfectly complements the art and is a moody mixture of piano, accordion, and violin. All of the characters are drawn in an exaggerated style, even minor ones, making up for the relative lack of personality that the protagonists (Layton and Luke) are generally pretty flat themselves.
The puzzles themselves are varied and, in general, well constructed. Some are simple riddles, others involve manipulating blocks around constrained areas, and others are just straight up math questions. Sometimes, the hints don’t reveal enough leading to an unsatisfying guessing approach, but genuinely solving a puzzle that characters in the game were moaning about is always fun. There are also some odd minigames that I can’t stop thinking about. Namely, the bizarre tamagotchi-esque sim where you decorate Layton and Luke’s bedrooms in an effort to make them happy.
The major gripes I have with the game have to do with the puzzle solving UI. This game desperately needs a whiteboard feature. Oftentimes, I would find myself pulling out a physical whiteboard to take notes while working on puzzles and this is something that could have easily been implemented with the touch screen on the system. Once you have the solution to a puzzle, inputting the numbers or letters to answer it feels like its own puzzle. Single strokes are recorded as inputs so adding an “E” to your answer is needlessly complicated.
The game’s story is the vehicle that moves you from puzzle to puzzle and, for what it is, I found it to be quite satisfying. Like the gameplay itself, the narrative is a series of puzzles in the form of mysteries that are gradually revealed. The resolution to some of the mysteries feels obvious by the time you reach them, but this is mostly due to appropriate clues being given beforehand. Refreshingly, the character of Flora, who is crucial to the resolution of the story, is actually given some agency of her own rather than being relegated to the damsel in distress as was typical of the time. I don’t want to spoil too much, but the story is quaint, a little sinister, and doesn’t overstay its welcome.
I’m looking forward to seeing what the rest of the DS trilogy has to offer. The Curious Village showcases the charm that the Professor Layton series would be known for. UI gripes aside, any puzzle aficionado or cozy game enjoyer should give this one a shot.
Lemonstrade
3 months ago