Hands-on with May's Mysteries: The Secret of Dragonville on DS

Since it first launched in 2008, the Professor Layton puzzle series on Nintendo DS hasn't really received any real competition for the head-scratching crown.

That may be about to change, however, with the upcoming May's Mysteries: The Secret of Dragonville. Rather than simply trying to get one up on Hershel, May instead essentially copies the Layton setup point by point.

It's easy to throw the word 'clone' around as a means of comparison, but in this case it's more than justified. May's Mysteries is an unabashed copy of the Layton series, complete with assets that feel ripped straight out of the popular series and a setup that is similar in nearly every way.

Of course, we've still got a while until the next Layton title is released, so a nearly-Layton game could fill that gap.

The story follows May and her brother Tery as they find themselves trapped in the strange world of Dragonville, where an evil dictator has laid down some strange rules.

When May loses Tery, she's forced to delve deeper into the town, talking to locals and solving puzzles, in the hope of returning to their hometown of Balloonville.

From the get-go, the Layton-esque feel is pretty full on. The game begins with a cut-scene that could easily have been taken straight from Layton, and strides onwards in the full knowledge that it's copying the series at every step.

The top screen is used to track your progress via a very familiar interface. The music sounds like its from Layton, the layout is Hershel all over - even the fonts scream the Prof.

The gameplay is incredibly similar, too. As you walk around, you'll bump into people who will give you puzzles to solve if you poke them.

The puzzles are introduced by a numbered screen, telling you how many points they're worth. Get a puzzle wrong and the value of the points drops. Puzzles are explained on the top screen, and then solved on the bottom.

Let's turn off our Layton-detectors for a second and talk about the puzzles themselves, which, thankfully, do venture off the beaten path a little.

The majority include reading a clue on the top screen and then using additional information on the bottom to decipher the answer, ranging from written words to numbers to circling answers.

There are also rhythm mini-games, hidden object puzzles, arranging puzzles, and the like. While it's still rather easy to note the obvious Layton inspiration, May's Mysteries definitely features its own sparks of genius.

One interesting way in which the title differs is that in May's Mysteries, you may enter a puzzle without having all the details required yet, whereas in Layton every puzzle is always solvable on the spot.

At these points, you need to search Dragonville a little more and collect every bit of information before returning to give it another crack.

May's Mysteries, then, is your fix of Professor Layton until the next actual Layton game arrives.

We don't think it's going to match the popular series in terms of quality, as the story and puzzles don't feel as clever or fresh.

But at the same time, we still enjoyed our hands-on time with May's adventure, and will happily give it a full play when it's released in August.