Professor Layton and the Curious Village for Nintendo DS

Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a puzzle-adventure game for the Nintendo DS, made by Level-5 and published worldwide by Nintendo. Metacritic gives it a Metascore of 85, and it was first sold in Japan in February 2007.

Overview

The first game in the Professor Layton series sends the archaeologist Hershel Layton and his self-appointed apprentice Luke Triton to the village of St. Mystere. A late baron left an heirloom called the Golden Apple as a test for whoever would inherit his fortune, and the villagers, who love brain teasers, will help only after the visitors solve their puzzles.

Wikipedia says development started in 2006. Level-5 president Akihiro Hino wanted to make a trilogy based on Atama no Taisou, a puzzle book series he loved as a child by Chiba University professor Akira Tago. The company used a different name to avoid copyright trouble and worked directly with Tago, who led the puzzle team and wrote 30 new puzzles for the DS. Hino took the pairing of Layton and Luke from Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, and the temporary names stuck.

How it plays

The player moves Layton and Luke around the village by tapping, talking to people and examining objects. Puzzles come from villagers or are hidden in scenery. Each has a value in picarats, there is no time limit, and three hints can be bought with limited hint coins, of which the player starts with ten. A wrong answer lowers the puzzle’s value by roughly ten percent for each of the first two mistakes. Missed puzzles reappear at Granny Riddleton’s Puzzle Shack halfway through.

Answers are entered by selecting an option, drawing on the screen or typing letters and numbers. Rewards include gizmos for building a robotic dog that sniffs out hidden coins, furniture for the inn rooms, and portrait pieces for a jigsaw. After the 120 puzzles and the three minigames are done, up to fifteen bonus puzzles open from the main menu. Over 25 more were distributed weekly, every Sunday, for six months over the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection.

Release and credits

Wikipedia lists Japan on 15 February 2007, North America on 10 February 2008, Australia on 10 April 2008, South Korea on 11 September 2008 and Europe on 7 November 2008. Metacritic gives the North American date. Australia later received a re-release that swaps the American localisation for the British English one with European artwork.

Tomohito Nishiura composed a French-influenced score. Square Enix Music Online rated the Japanese-only soundtrack album 6 out of 10, and RPGFan called its music repetitive. The animated cutscenes were made by P.A. Works, and the advertising budget was around 700 million yen. By Wikipedia’s count the game sold more than a million copies in Japan and 3.17 million worldwide. An enhanced mobile port arrived in 2018.

Reception

Metacritic’s score is based on 72 critic reviews. Reviewers disagreed about the blend of adventure and puzzles. 1UP.com liked it better than games that bury puzzles in the environment, while Game Informer thought the main mystery was solved for the player. Many noted that replay value is low once the puzzles are done.

Famitsu gave 33 out of 40. Edge gave 7 out of 10 and called it utterly charming. The A.V. Club gave an A minus, the Daily Telegraph 8 out of 10, and USA Today gave ten stars, adding that children around eight would enjoy the mystery although some puzzles needed advanced maths and that the sweet spot was ages twelve and up. Nintendo Power listed its ending among the best on a Nintendo console.

Can you still play it?

The card works in a DS, DS Lite or DSi, and a 3DS runs it in DS mode. Wii U and Switch hardware cannot read it. According to Wikipedia’s region lock page, DS cards that are not DSi-exclusive are not region-locked, so the North American, European and Japanese editions all start. The choice between them mostly concerns language and the American or British localisation.

The extras are what is missing. The weekly puzzle downloads ended with the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection on 20 May 2014, so only the built-in puzzles and the unlockable bonus ones remain. Nintendo stopped making the 3DS family on 16 September 2020.