Often, I find myself on the bus or train with no phone signal and think, “Damnit, why do all of my games need an internet connection?” Such is the supreme folly of man. If you’re ever in a similar situation then worry no more, as I present you with two games that are perfect for an offline cross-country voyage.
Professor Layton and Pandora’s Box: HD for Mobile | iOS/Android | £8.99
The original Professor Layton Trilogy has been ported to mobile devices in HD (in case the name didn’t make that clear) marking a considerable upgrade from the 256×192 pixels of the original DS. When I played through the originals as a child, Pandora’s Box was my favourite as it achieved a unique blend of wacky anime bullshit and spooky intrigue that captured my fledgling imagination.
If the other entries are of interest to you, perhaps as a result of Stockholm Syndrome nostalgia, you’ll find the first instalment, Curious Village, and the third instalment, Lost Future, on the app store ported into glorious HD too.
To synopsise: Pandora’s Box sees Professor Layton and his sidekick, Luke, exploring the phantom town of Folsense while on the hunt for the Elysian Box, an ancient artifact a friend of Layton’s was researching when he was murdered, landing the Professor in the middle of a three-way race for the box – there’s also, like, a vampire, who the townsfolk are pretty chill about but it’s also kind of possible that the town doesn’t even really exist.
Still following? Of course you are; this game is made for kids.
The core gameplay of this pseudo point-and-click adventure comes in the form of puzzles scattered throughout the game. You encounter puzzles by pushing through the story and talking to people (who seem to base their entire personality around crosswords and tea) or by tapping wildly on the game’s many hand-drawn environments until one pops out of a hedge or a chimney or an alley cat’s arsehole. The puzzles range from simple logic gates, block sliding challenges, and actual algebra, and they never really get much better than that, but realistically how difficult would you want a game like this to be? You might look at some of these basic puzzles and completely discount the game as something to teach kids about thinking outside the box, but it’s not the puzzles you stick around for: it’s the charm.
The ‘Puzzles’ theme song is aptly haunting and mysterious, the Professor is always teaching Luke about how to be a gentleman, and whenever you discover a new location the Professor and Luke are quick to converse about how spooky or beautiful it is. Professor Layton for mobile offers a perfect bite-sized dosage of heartfelt story, wondrous locales, and engaging (enough) puzzles for someone to dip into while on the go.
There are over 150 brainteasers to work through, though only half of those will actually take any work, and if you complete them all there are still minigames to keep you entertained. In one, you are tasked with setting up an obstacle course with toys you’ve earned by completing puzzles in such a way that your obese hamster will walk far enough to lose weight. As a child, I found this minigame slightly more taxing than I could ever be bothered to deal with but recently returning as a young adult with a handful of A-Levels and genuine accomplishments, it still proves slightly more work than I can handle.
Please, write in with how to solve it. I have no idea.
A decent 3/5 stars.
Mini Motorways | Steam/Switch/iOS/macOS/Windows | £7.19
If you’re familiar with Mini Metro, then you’re already part of the way towards understanding Mini Motorways (this one’s about cars instead of trains). This half-sequel sees a major graphical overhaul to the original Harry Beck-inspired minimalist map as well as some thematic mechanical differences to deal with the unique problems an overground landscape presents.
Mini Motorways is a game about creating roads and infrastructure to help red dots get to work at the red factory, blue dots to work at the blue factory, and so on. It really is that simple – there’s a score counter which goes up every time a coloured dot gets to the correct place, and you lose when too many dots can’t get to their destination. Simple.
There are a number of maps based on real-world locations you can choose from, each presenting a different challenge to the last, subtly based on that place’s actual traffic issues. For instance, in the first level, Los Angeles, you start out with two roads – one exclusively for yellow cars and one exclusively for red cars – then two minutes pass and suddenly the map seems a lot bigger and the huge Los Angeles River keeps getting in the way and now there are four colours all fighting over one bridge because you thought traffic lights were a better investment than roundabouts but now you’re discovering that traffic lights are only really good at one thing and that’s making sure lots of people stop driving all at once.
It’s a simple game really.
One of the best ways to play Mini Motorways is against a friend – not that it’s inherently a multiplayer game, but because it harkens back to ye olde arcade cabinet times when you could easily compete with your friends to see who had the highest score. Of course, this may cause some tensions when your friends get a layout of random buildings that line up neatly and you get a map where your only option is to implement 12 spaghetti junctions, but that’s just the nature of the game.
Don’t have any friends? Compete against me! My highest score is 2205 on the Tokyo map – good luck!
Even if you don’t care about score, this game will still appeal to your aesthetic sense. The gentle dings and boops of a car reaching its destination beautifully bolster the feeling of a system idly noodling away to itself, and the crisp snapping together of new roads to form your idyllic infrastructure is simply satisfying beyond belief.
A strong 4/5 stars.
Images: Professor Layton and Pandora’s Box – Level-5, Mini Motorways – Dinosaur Polo Club