Profesor Layton

Intenté recientemente explicar a un amigo sobre el zorro, el pollo y el gusano.

“Es un rompecabezas clásico.  Usted tiene un zorro, un pollo, y un gusano en un lado de un río.  Usted puede llevar solamente dos de ellos en un barco. Si usted deja el zorro solo con el pollo, lo comerá, y si usted deja el pollo solo con el gusano, lo comerá.  Cómo puede usted conseguir los tres de ellos a través del río con seguridad?”

Mi amigo, nunca jugando Zork cero, mirado me como si era enojado.  Pero ahora tengo mi venganza, porque lo he introducido a Profesor Layton y la aldea curiosa, que tiene una variante de este rompecabezas, y él es totalmente adicto.

Los juegos del rompecabezas han sido un outré del pedacito en el pasado pocos años desde que la comunidad de la PC se recuperó de los excesos de los años tempranos del CD-ROM.  Quizás era un sentido persistente de jugar pasado las horas perdido excedente de la culpabilidad La 7ma huésped.  El rompecabezas típico en juegos de hoy tiende para ser un sideshow al acontecimiento principal y al taladro a patear.

Profesor Layton y la aldea curiosa is all about good puzzles, what are sometimes called “brainteasers”.  Some of them are straightforward, some of them are trick puzzles.  Some are easy, some are hard.  But nearly all of them are interesting, and they don’t talk down to the player.

The eponymous Professor Layton and his apprentice, Luke, visit the village of St. Mystere to assist in a mysterious bequest.  The villagers of St. Mystere spend their days, and nights, trying to solve puzzles.  As Layton unravels the thread of the game’s plot he will also be presented with well over 100 puzzles, of varied difficulties, by the villagers.

The artwork is beautiful: simple lines, and somehow evocative of the animated film The Triplets of Belleville.  The music, likewise, evokes the French countryside, and if it can get a bit repetitive at times, it still enhances the experience.  That being said, I’m a sucker for accordion music.   Your mileage may vary. The inhabitants of the village are by turns awkward, fat, ugly, grotesque-looking, and supercilious, so it looks to me as though the authors actually did carefully survey the inhabitants of small French villages before creating the game.  

Throughout the game you’ll find “hint coins” which can be used to purchase hints on any puzzles.  You’ll also receive different puzzles from the same villagers.  At the end of a given “chapter” of the game, any unsolved puzzles will appear in “Granny Riddleton’s Puzzle Shack”, so there is no way to  permanently miss a puzzle.  It did seem to me that solving a puzzle in Granny’s shack was less satisfying than solving it “on the street,” but that’s entirely a question of mood.

There are also various meta-puzzles along the way that unlock bonus content, and there is extra downloadable content that can be played without impacting the main storyline of the game.

A sequel has already been released in Japan, and work is proceeding on the third game, which I will buy without a second thought.  It’s that good.