After hearing about a strange inheritance dispute in the town of St. Mystere, Professor Layton and his young apprentice, Luke, travel there on behalf of Lady Dahlia, who has requested their presence to resolve the issue. However, it quickly becomes apparent that St. Mystere is quite strange... all the townsfolk seem to be obsessed with puzzles, and Baron Reinhold's fortune isn't the only secret that the town has hidden...

Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a puzzle game which uses the works of Akira Tago, author of the Japanese series of Head Gymnastics books as its basis. As both Layton and Luke, players explore the town of St. Mystere screen by screen. Each screen contains puzzles, either hidden in the scenery or by talking to characters. Upon finding a puzzle, the screen changes and the player is presented with the puzzle itself: the description of the puzzle on the top screen, and the puzzle (as well as the place to input the answer) on the bottom screen. Some puzzles require simple calculation, some have a trick answer, while others are riddles. The selection of puzzles is quite varied. If the player gets stuck, they can purchase a hint with 'Hint Coins'. However, these are limited - more can be found hidden in the game world, but there a set number of coins in the entire game.

Professor Layton has a visual style similar to that of a watercolor painting. While most of the game does not have much animation, key story sequences are told in fully animated and voice acted scenes. The game also used Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection to connect to the Internet and download additional puzzles for players to solve.

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Alternate Titles

"レイトン教授と不思議な町" -- Japanese spelling
"Professor Layton und das geheimnisvolle Dorf" -- German title
"Professeur Layton et l'étrange Village" -- French title
"Layton Kyouju to Fushigi na Machi" -- Japanese title
"레이튼 교수와 이상한 마을" -- Korean spelling

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Part of the Following Groups

Merchant	Title	Platform
	Professor Layton and the Curious Village: Nintendo DS	Nintendo DS
	Professor Layton and the Curious Village
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User Reviews

Picarats for your brain	NeoJ (428)
Nothing worse than a broken puzzle game.	Pixelspeech (928)

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The Press Says

Game Couch	Feb 27, 2008		100
Game Shark	Feb 22, 2008	A	100
GameSpot	Feb 14, 2008	9 out of 10	90
Boomtown	Mar 25, 2008	9 out of 10	90
Adventure Gamers	Apr 12, 2008		90
NintendoWorldReport	May 29, 2008	8 out of 10	80
Gamervision	Feb, 2008	8 out of 10	80
V2.fi	Dec 01, 2008	77 out of 100	77
Good Game	Apr 07, 2008	7.5 out of 10	75
Gamekult	Nov 05, 2008	7 out of 10	70