Cartmel College - Lancaster University - Official Website

Platform: Nintendo DS
Developer: Level 5
Publisher: Nintendo

Here’s a puzzle for you. “How many times does the number nine appear within whole numbers between one and one hundred?”

If you simply don’t care, Professor Layton isn’t for you. Within the game is 160 more of these buggers, each getting progressively more fiendish, but yet more and more satisfying each time you beat one.

If you get stuck you can cash in on a hint coin for one of three tips for each puzzle. However, you can’t just go willy-nilly on these as finding them is a quest in itself – to find the coins, you need to tap about each beautifully stylised environment screen, probing all sorts of bizarre places.

The environment I speak of is, of course, the titular curious village. And it is rather curious – as soon as you arrive the (rather weak but mildly entertaining) plot kicks in and you get stranded in the village due to a small drawbridge/moat problem. You were going to stay on your way to discover The Golden Apple anyway – the main point of the game – but now you don’t have much choice.

So, naturally, all that’s left to do is to literally poke around and solve the story’s mysteries, getting to know each individual villager. Their dialogue might seem hackneyed at times, especially when it’s a segway into a puzzle, but it doesn’t matter as you’ll soon be engrossed trying to find its solution.

This will happen 161 times, until you realise that there are twenty nines between one and one hundred, and you’ve been playing for hours.

– Dom Stroud – Editor