This is like a miniature version of the old two-player game Othello. Your board is a grid of sixteen squares, and twelve of those have white rabbits on them.
Superb puzzler is a smart treat for kids and their parents. Read Common Sense Media's Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask review, age.
By click-dragging the rabbits on the lower screen, you can move them around the board.Any rabbit can jump any number of other rabbits. Any jumped rabbits turn white to brown (or brown to white), though the jumper does not turn. The goal is to turn all the white rabbits to brown.This can be solved in eight moves. If the grid is laid out like this.01 02 03 0405 06 07 0809 10 11 1213 14 15 16.then the proper moves are as follows: Show Spoilers.
After a phenomenally successful opening weekend in Japan, became the 3DS' best-selling launch game – and it's easy to see why. Japan went absolutely mental for Layton's gentle, endearing mix of high-quality script and voice-acting, quaint, alternate-universe European setting and excellently-designed brain-teasers when the first game released back in 2007, and its popularity has only grown since. We got our hands on a Japanese copy of the game to see how the 3DS has changed things for the series – and whether it'll be worth the inevitable wait.The first thing you notice is that Professor Layton sounds way sexier in Japanese (and Luke sounds much less annoying).
The second thing, though, is the huge leap in graphical quality. The characters are all actual models now, cel-shaded and outlined in black. It's a relief to see that the Professor Layton series has been updated without losing any of its style or soul. That beautiful watercolour aesthetic works just as well in 3D, and we finally have some conversational animations rather than pretty but static images. Mask of Miracle's third main character, Emmy Altava, will be unfamiliar to non-Japanese Layton fans – she was introduced in Specter's Flute, the fourth game in the series which is still waiting for a Western release date. She's a 25-year-old assistant to the Professor, and she, Luke and Layton himself for an investigative trio, taking it in turns to solve puzzles. It's possible that their paths will split as the game goes on, too, but at least for the first few hours, they stick together.
Layton, Luke and Emmy are called to a town called Montdol by a concerned letter from an old friend, Sharon, whom Layton hasn't seen in eighteen years. She asks for his assistance in solving the mystery of the Mask of Miracle – a mask that can supposedly grant wishes to the wearer.
There's also an extremely cool secondary plot running through the game, in which we get to see his friends during his university days, complete with ridiculous hairstyle. Montdol is a gorgeous collage of tumbledown, European-style buildings constructed at weird, eye-catching angles. The streets are cobbled, the colours are rustic, and the whole place has the look of a hand-painted watercolour. When you turn up the 3D slider, the characters and buildings appear much more distinct from the backgrounds, and conversation text and icons come right to the forefront of the screen. The 3D is subtle, but it brings the environment to life – to take full advantage of the effect, all the important goings-on and puzzle-solving now take place on the top screen.
The game opens as Layton and co arrive in town in the midst of a carnival. But suddenly, chaos erupts – a huge inflatable clown falls from the sky, sending the carnival parade scurrying for safety, and when the dust clears it appears that the townsfolk have been turned to stone. A white-suited man in a mask suddenly appears on a rooftop, laughing a trademark baddie laugh – he seems to know Layton, but it's not clear how. He then spontaneously grows wings and takes off through the town. Happily, there are three horses nearby, and the Professor chases after him on horseback Layton gets a sturdy brown steed, Emmy a white horse, and poor wee Luke is stuck with a dopey-looking grey pony with its tongue lolling out of its mouth.
It's a lovely, gentle sense of humour that these games have – it still comes across strongly in the cutscenes, character design and dialogue. What ensues is something unusual for a Layton game: an action interlude.
Guiding Layton with the stylus on the bottom screen, we must chase after the winged man, taking the right turns down narrow streets and avoiding barrels in the horse's way. The 3D is rather more impressive here, as the tall buildings roll past at speed and the white-suited chap disappears away into the distance ahead of us. Before long, though, he vanishes in mid-air. A white sheet falls to earth at an astonished Layton's feet. From then on, we're free to explore the town, chatting to the remaining townsfolk – not all of them were turned into stone – and, of course, discovering puzzles to solve.