The first of Japanese developer Level 5's award-winning Professor Layton games to see release in North America, Professor Layton and the Curious Village is, on the surface, a simple point and click -- or tap, in the case of the DS -- adventure game that sees the titular, top-hat wearing professor and his apprentice, Luke, investigating a local mystery involving the last will and testament of a rich eccentric in a strange little country town. In actuality it's a bona fide bonanza of brainteasers, offering up more than 100 word riddles, spatial conundrums, numerical enigmas, and trick questions sure to please the sort of folk who enjoy taking online IQ tests or playing mind training games like Nintendo's own Big Brain Academy.

The device by which these puzzles are delivered is neat and simple: Nearly everyone the professor meets during his investigation presents him with a conundrum, either because they're aware of his famed puzzle solving skill or as a part of a barter in which the reward for solving the riddle is information essential to the primary story. It's contrived, to be sure, but the inherent oddness of a town populated by puzzle-obsessed citizens is easily overlooked due to the simple fact that the puzzles are really fun.

Some of the riddles will likely be recognizable as variations on problems posed by your teachers in school, such as one in which we are tasked to name the number of times three digits are repeated back to back on a digital clock in a 24-hour period. Others are better associated with Mensa-style quizzes, like the game's many visual puzzles that task us to analyze a picture composed of matchsticks before moving just one or two to create a new image. Still others are ancient riddles that have existed for hundreds or thousands of years, like one in which we need to transport wolves and chicks across a river on a raft without ever having the wolves outnumber the chicks on either side.

Of course, there is also the occasional bomb, which usually takes the form of a trick question in which the riddle is sufficiently vague to cause confusion about what the answer may be without stooping to ask for a hint. One puzzle, for example, tasks us to figure out which of five criminal suspects are telling the truth based on their statements about how many of their cohorts are fibbing. You might -- understandably -- come to the conclusion that all of them are lying (they are potential criminals after all) and guess that none of them are telling the truth, thinking it was one of the game's trick questions. But you'd be wrong, and it would cost you a few of the game's points (called Picarats).

However, odd misfire aside, Professor Layton and the Curious Village is entertaining, addictive, and sure to grab hold of anyone who has even a passing affinity for mindbenders. And, with two other Japanese entries in the series yet to be translated, there's hope to see even more of Doc Layton stateside before long.