Wednesday, August 26, 2009

professor layton and the diabolical box - first impressions

Eight people are playing an unusual communication game. In this game, one person has to get a message across to seven other people.

It takes one minute to pass along the message, and each time the message is spoken, it can only have one recipient. Using these rules, what's the shortest amount of time in minutes for the message to pass to all seven other players?

That's from Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box for the DS, the sequel to Curious Village released in February of last year. After doing 30 or so puzzles (out of over 150), I am very impressed by this game. It has amazing music that is definitely as good (if not better) than Curious Village: my favorite track so far (highly recommended). The artwork is just as impressive as the last game. There are more minigames and they are more challenging. The story is good so far, with more characters and a bigger environment.

Most of the puzzles, however, lack the charm and originality of the first game. They aren't necessarily easier or harder (although I guess for the most part they are easier), but they do seem to lack a bit of the imagination to which I associated the previous game's puzzles. Perhaps they will get better over time -- as with the previous game, they tend to start out easy then get tougher and more interesting. We shall see, but for now it's the only negative aspect of the game.

Find the answer to the puzzle in the comments!

1 comment:

  1. 3 minutes. Person A transmits to person B (1st minute). Persons A and B transmit to C and D (2nd minute). Persons A, B, C, D transmit to E, F, G, H (3rd minute).

    Yeah it's really not hard but some of the good ones require visuals and generally show up later on in the game. Maybe I'll post some more as I progress.

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