Professor Layton and the Curious Village

Professor Layton and the Curious Village

Nintendo DS - USA - Cover.

Developer Level-5 Publisher Level-5 Published 2007-02-15 Platforms Android, iOS, Nintendo DS Genres Adventure, Graphic adventure, Multi-genre, Passive puzzle, Puzzle, Visual novel Themes Adventure, Law Enforcement, Suspense, Mystery Series Layton Distribution Commercial

Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a graphic adventure puzzle video game with a mystery theme developed and published by Level-5 for the Nintendo DS on 2007-02-15. An HD remake was released in 2018 for Android and iOS. It's the first game in the Layton series.

In the game, you play a puzzle solving duo — Professor Layton and his young apprentice, Luke. The two travel to the puzzle-obsessed town of St. Mystere to help Lady Dahlia find the hidden treasure of her deceased father, Baron Reinhold, but quickly realize that there is foul work afoot. As you talk to people around the town, you discover that there are many more mysteries to be solved.

Personal

Own?	No.
Won?	Yes. All gizmo pieces, torn painting, 120/120 puzzles (needed a hint to find 2, but solved them all on my own.), 13 hours and 52 minutes.
Finished	2022-11-03.

Looking to expand my familiarity with the Nintendo DS, I read several lists of the most popular titles. While this game wasn't on the list, one of its sequels was, but, I didn't want to begin with a sequel, so I started with this one. I finished it finding all the pieces of the gizmo, completed the torn painting, solved 115/120 puzzles, had a score of 3,914 picarates, and it took me 12 hours and 37 minutes. The next day, I found and solved 118 puzzles, and needed a hint to find the remaining 2, but I solved them all on my own. I needed one more hint to find the point of the furniture puzzle, and ended with 4,124 picarats, and it took me 13 hours and 52 minutes.

Review

7	7	8	7	8

Best Version: ?

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• There is a large variety of puzzles including mathematics, word games, logic puzzles, and many more. They also include many traditional puzzles like sliders, matchstick puzzles, and the like. Despite there being a lot of these traditional styles, I only knew of a handful of them because the designers often took a fresh take on the older puzzles. There are over 100 puzzles, and only a few of them are particularly difficult, but many of them are quite satisfying to solve.
• The graphics are professional. The painted backgrounds look fabulous, and Professor Layton, Luke, and several other characters are well designed and animated.
• The French-inspired music is very nice and fitting. The sound effects and voice are well-done also.
• The game, thankfully, has a number of built-in hints which help point you in the right direction without ever spoiling the puzzles. I didn't need them on most puzzles, but they were quite welcome when I was stumped.
• The "did I solve it?" pause after you submit your answer is a nice way to build tension.
• The game lets you play puzzles you may have missed in the previous chapters so you aren't prevented from playing them, and you're even told when you missed one.
• The addition of meta puzzles, like the torn painting and furniture puzzle, are a nice break from the more serialized ones.
• I like that you can often use the stylus on the lower screen as a scratch pad while trying to solve many of the puzzles.
• The OCR from the input is surprisingly good.
• There is a lot of unlockable content to uncover as you solve the puzzles.
• I like how continuing gives you a brief recap of where you left off.

Bad

• After the first couple coins are found, there is no need to pop a dialog each time. It just slows down the game.
• The character art for many of the side-characters looks quite awful.
• There's no point doing the "did I solve it?" animation for puzzles that automatically end when correctly solved.
• While most of the puzzles were quite fair, a few were really open for interpretation, and my interpretation was often wrong.
• I don't like how chapters end without first warning you, causing you to miss puzzles in their original environment. Sure, you can talk to Granny R to get the ones you missed, but it's not the same.
• Most of the puzzles that look hard at first glance end up having a simple trick solution. Not that this is bad, but I wouldn't mind a few puzzles that are actually hard.
• At the beginning, the chapters are widely spaced, but, near the end, you run through them very quickly.
• Some of the hidden puzzles are "hidden" in strange ways. For a couple of them, you have to click on a random blank wall.
• I didn't care for the furniture puzzle. A lot of what Luke and the Professor says hinders how you divvy them up.

Ugly

• The reveal about the citizens of St. Mystere at the end is awfully far-fetched and ruins the bulk of the mystery. As is the reason the Baron put it together for his daughter.

Media

Box Art

• 

  Nintendo DS - Japan.

• 

  Nintendo DS - South Korea.

• 

  Nintendo DS - USA.

• 

  Nintendo DS - Europe.

• 

  Mobile - World - HD remake.

Documentation

• 

  Manual - Canada.

Videos

Trailer.

Speedrun.

Longplay.

Play Online

Nintendo DS (Europe), Nintendo DS (USA)

Representation

Strong female character?	Fail	None of the women are particularly strong.
Bechdel test?	Fail	There are several women, but they never talk to each other.
Strong person of color character?	Fail	As far as I can tell, everyone is white.
Queer character?	Pass	Ramon appears to be gay, although he's a caricature.

Gordon's character design seems to exist just to fat shame him.

Titles

Language	Native	Transliteration	Translation
English	Professor Layton and the Curious Village
French	Professeur Layton et l'Etrange Village		Professor Layton and the Strange Village
German	Professor Layton und das Geheimnisvolle Dorf		Professor Layton and the Mysterious Village
Italian	Il Professor Layton e il Paese dei Misteri		Professor Layton and the Village of Mysteries
Japanese	レイトン教授と不思議な町	Reiton Kyoju to Fushigi na Machi	Professor Layton and the Mysterious Town
Korean	레이튼 교수와 이상한 마을	Layton Gyosuwa Isanghan Maeul	Professor Layton and the Strange Village
Spanish	El Profesor Layton y la Villa Misteriosa		Professor Layton and the Mysterious Village

Links