Alright, so Professor Layton und der Ruf des Phantoms (that’s the German version of Curious Village, by the way) is one of those games that makes you feel like a genius and an idiot at the same time. You start off with this classy professor and his kid sidekick rolling into a weird little town where everyone’s obsessed with riddles—like, even the baker won’t sell you bread unless you solve a puzzle first.

The art style’s got this cozy storybook vibe, and the puzzles? Some are stupidly simple (why does the chicken cross the road?), but others will have you scribbling notes like a madperson. I got stuck on one sliding-block puzzle for, like, 20 minutes before realizing I’d been overcomplicating it the whole time.

What’s cool is how the story actually makes you care about solving stuff—there’s a mystery about a missing heir, a creepy phantom, and enough twists to keep you poking around every corner. Just don’t be surprised if you accidentally burn through half your hint coins on the first day.

It’s the kind of game where you tell yourself “one more puzzle” at midnight and suddenly it’s 2 AM.