Parent's Guide: Layton's Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires' Conspiracy - Age rating, mature content and difficulty

What is Layton's Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires' Conspiracy?

Packed with puzzles, brain teasers, and logical conundrums galore, Layton's Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires' Conspiracy sees the ever popular Layton series get a new maiden at its helm. Katrielle Layton - Professor Layton's daughter - has decided to go into business for herself, setting up a detective agency to take advantage of the family's famous logical powers. Setting up shop in heart of London, it doesn't take long before people start knocking on your door looking for help - first when Big Ben's handle goes missing, and then when two people fall into the Thames during a festival of love (and it looks like one may have been pushed!). Putting your puzzling hat on, it's up to you to explore the charming locations, solve the puzzles, and get to the bottom of the many mysteries the game throws your way!

How do you play Layton's Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires' Conspiracy?

A point and click adventure game with a strong emphasis on logic-based puzzles, Layton's Mystery Journey is a game that'll really test your grey matter. Starting out by exploring the scenic streets of London, using the Touch Screen as a kind of mouse pad to move a cursor around on the top screen, you'll be able to find hidden secrets in each area, chat to any passers by, and find the all important puzzles.

This being a Layton game, the puzzles actually form the majority of the gameplay here, with a huge raft of logic based puzzles to chew your way through. While you'll start out investigating the scenes, it doesn't take long before someone will refuse to help unless you can solve the puzzle they throw your way - and then it's time to put your thinking cap on. With Layton's Mystery Journey having more puzzles than any other Layton game to date, there's a huge diversity to the challenges here, from using a collection of triangles to form a "k" to go in a shop sign, to arranging a square, triangle and circle so they form a pen to keep a number of chickens enclosed, to wordier, more logic based puzzles - like one that revolves around a pair of digital scales. The bottom left part of their screens have stopped working, and because of that, one is reading 1g higher than it should, and the other is 1g lower. With that mind, can you figure out what they're each showing, and how much sugar you're weighing in total?

How easy is Layton's Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires' Conspiracy to pick up and play?

In terms of accessibility, Layton's Mystery Journey is a game that relies heavily on logic, with puzzles that often require you to approach them in a very specific, quizzical manner. While in general, the game may be easier than the previous Professor Layton games, there's still plenty of puzzles here that will really wrack your brain. While some puzzles can be figured out through trial and error alone, some of the more wordy puzzles really require you to go over them very slowly, working your way through the logic piece by piece (like "The second eldest boy is four years younger then me. The second eldest girl, who I get on with really well, is three years younger than the eldest girl (...) how old am I"), while others involve fairly complex maths (like getting you to work out that 4 x 14 is 56), but there's no maths here that goes beyond early secondary school level stuff. The vast majority of the puzzles here can be figured out using logic alone.

Luckily, if you do get stuck, Layton's Mystery Journey has an incredibly helpful hint system, which will incrementally steer you towards the answer. Every puzzle has five potential hints you can use, with each hint being progressively more obvious about what you need to do to find the answer. If you just want a nudge in the right direction, you might be able to get away with just the one hint - but if you're completely flummoxed, you may have to rely on all five. You'll need to choose wisely though - unlocking hints requires you to spend hint coins, which you can find scattered throughout the game's world.

With little in the way of voice acting, and a lot of complex reading involved, including written regional accents, and puzzles that require some sharp comprehension, a solid reading ability is required. Layton's Mystery Journey is, however, full subtitled.

Sample sentences include:

• Sorry, I wasn't tryin' to test ya or nothin', I just wanted to see it with my own eyes.
• You can't trust detectives if you ask me. They're as bad as the master creminils they're supposed to investigate.
• Like I said, I saw the inspector not long ago. I'm fairly sure 'e's in 'is office.
• And it's not gonna look too clever if the very 'ands the pendant is modelled on 'ave been 'alf-inched by some lowlife
• here we have nine people, some 'good guys' and some 'bad guys'. If the good guy shave a bad guy next to them, they will point at them, otherwise they will fold their arms. Whereas the bad guys will point at someone, whether that person is good or bad. Touch a person to mark him as a bad guy.

With nothing in the way of blood, violence, sexual content or bad language, there's little in the way of mature content in Layton's Mystery Journey. While some cases see Katrielle investigating potential murders (one case references some autopsy details, but again, there's nothing graphic), this is a game that's free of the grizzly details of most crime games, with the vast majority of cases being more mysteries than murders.

Age Ratings

Format Reviewed: Nintendo 3DS