If I were to come into work one morning in a clapped-out 2CV and sporting a natty top hat, chances are that Jay would either mock me viciously or proceed to violently punch me until I got rid of both. Likewise, if I strolled in one morning asking for coffee only to have Jay say ‘well okay, but only after you solve this tricky arithmetic puzzle’ it’s quite likely that I would proceed to throw aforementioned drink at him and ram the filter machine where the sun doesn’t shine.

With this in mind, the fact that Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a game where a chap who drives a clapped-out 2CV and wears a top hat whilst undertaking a number of brain-frying puzzles might lead you to think that it’s the kind of thing that’ll amuse and anger me in equal amounts. To an extent you’d be right, but before I tell you my closing thoughts you have to read through this jaunty little grammar poser first.

Curious Village, developed by the bods at Level 5 who were also responsible for the latest Dragon Quest game and Rogue Galaxy, is primarily a puzzle adventure title, akin to what would no doubt result if Monkey Island got drunk one night and got DS Brain Training up the duff. Fantastically well-drawn anime-styled graphics provide an attractive front for a jolly little tale of mystery, murder and intrigue, with progress through such antics being gained by the player undertaking a string of logic puzzles.

The general gist of the game is that you tap your way around the village of St. Mystere – basically a series of static backgrounds linked together by a map - chatting to various characters, usually leading to them setting you some kind of riddle in order for you to glean information and/or get a plot-advancing cut scene or item. Dotted around the village are also numerous additional puzzles that can be found by poking about curiously with your stylus on pretty much every nook and cranny, so there’s a decent amount of bang for your buck (or poke for your pound if you want to be British and ever-so-slightly rude).

These puzzles vary greatly in type and difficulty, and with well over 100 to brainstorm through you’re going to have to flex your noodle a great deal in order to see things to a conclusion. It’s not the kind of thing that you’re going to be able to breeze through inside an evening unless you’re some kind of sadistic human supercomputer, so luckily you can save your progress at any point.

The puzzles themselves feature all the classic logistical teasers that we’ve grown to love/hate/ignore in an attempt to cover for our own ineptitude at such things, and for the most part they are good fun. Early exploits see you getting to grips with such things as arranging matchsticks to make new shapes, ferrying wolves and chickens across a canal without having the latter being eaten by the former and using three different capacity beakers to measure out equal amounts of a liquid. Oh, and there’s a few of those bloody annoying slide block puzzles you used to get as a kid when your parents had to shut you up for an indeterminate amount of time, and yes – they are as annoying as you remember them being.

A few times the game trips itself up trying to be too clever, mind, and it’s with great frustration that you realise on a few occasions that you actually need a pen and paper to crack a puzzle. This isn’t necessarily a problem if you’re sat at home next to your desk or at work near your office pen, but should you come up against said puzzles whilst on the bus or train it can get mighty frustrating and see your progress grind to a halt. It doesn’t happen too often, though, and at least the developers saw fit to not force people to shout/blow/spit into the sodding microphone all the time.

It’s not just the main storyline that Layton and his assistant Luke occupy themselves with, either. As they solve more of the game’s riddles they are given a number of random items, pieces of a painting and – bizarrely – furniture to assort around their inn rooms, each with their own reward upon completion. It’s a nice little aside and certainly fleshes out what otherwise would have been a slightly skeletal adventure, so thumbs up on that one.

Then there’s the whole story thing, which is quaint and keeps itself interesting throughout. It’s also terribly English to a fault, with both the Prof and Luke talking as if they’d been ripped from a 1960s Tomorrow’s World episode. It’s very much a case of jolly hockey sticks and buns and tea, and whilst this may grate with some people (it confused Jay no end) it actually fits in very well with the game’s atmosphere. Throughout the course of the game you’ll meet plenty of oddball characters, and the majority of them are really rather memorable and in a way quite personable.

The visuals are also lovely, with flat two-dimensional drawing giving way to some really rather lush pseudo-3D moments when the game kicks into a cut scene. The quality of the visuals is something that deserves special mention as it really adds a quirky charm to the game. We like quirks here at Ultra Ninjas, and heartily recommend that more developers pack them into their games.

It won’t last you forever, obviously, but while Prof Layton’s adventure is going you can’t help but be captivated. Some of the puzzles frustrate and there’s no real difficulty curve to speak of as it’s more of a difficulty ski slope full of peaks and valleys, but it’ll always leave a seed in you that makes you want to come back to it even if you end up throwing your DS on the floor and instructing your bewildered cat to break it. With a couple of follow-up titles scheduled to continue from the slight cliffhanger the game leaves you with and a weekly downloadable puzzle (woot!), anyone with a liking for the puzzlish side of life should give Curious Village a go as soon as.