Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box is one of those games where you start thinking you'll just solve a few puzzles, and suddenly it's 2 AM because you need to know what’s inside that cursed box. The story kicks off with your mentor turning up dead—or so it seems—holding this mysterious artifact, and of course, Layton and Luke hop on a train to investigate. Classic.

The puzzles are everywhere—talking to random passengers, inspecting weird objects, even the pause menu has little brain teasers tucked away. Some are stupidly satisfying (that sliding block one had me grinning), others made me want to flip the DS shut, but in a good way. The writing’s got this dry British humor too—Luke’s constant “Golly!” never gets old.

Honestly, half the fun is just poking around the gorgeous hand-drawn environments. There’s always some odd detail hiding a puzzle or a hint. Just don’t expect to breeze through without scribbling notes on scrap paper like a mad detective.