Nardio Review

Is It Worth Your Time?

Yes.

 

What Should I Play it On?

Layton Brothers Mystery Room is an universal app for iOS 4.3 or later.

 

What Did You Think Without Spoiling It?

If you loved Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney, then you’ll definitely enjoy Layton Brothers Mystery Room. There’s humor, mystery and some tricky puzzles that will keep you thinking. Be forewarned though, there is a LOT of reading, so if you don’t like having to click through a minute or so of dialogue, then you might not like this game. This is what the industry calls an interactive visual novel experience.

 

How Does it Play?

Layton Brothers Mystery Rooms offers simple controls that work seamlessly. For pretty much all of the crimes scenes the game shows you where exactly you should search for evidence with a circle. When you click on the circle you can then tap pieces of evidence that pop up, indicated by the same circle. You can also slide the camera view to zoom in for a more detailed look and to see other bits of evidence you could not click on in the zoomed out view. Before you even begin to call in witnesses or start making deductions you can spend five minutes looking around the room at all the evidence. Once you are satisfied you can begin the questioning. It might seem a little redundant when you actually start the deductions, after all you just go back to the crime scene and have to find the evidence again, but searching the crime scene beforehand will end up saving you a lot of time.

Once you’ve finally gathered all the necessary clues you get to call in the supposed suspect and present them with all of the evidence. There’s really no penalty if you get it wrong, so you can just keep guessing until you get the right answer. It takes around 5-6 pieces of evidence to break the suspect’s alibi which is denoted with a heart protected by a stone encasing. As the game progresses, the cases get trickier and the person that you suspect isn’t necessarily the actual criminal. It’s keeps the cases interesting and keeps the game fresh.

 

Why it Works

One of the main things that I love about Layton Brothers Mystery Room is the plot and the secret of the ‘Prof.’ There’s a good bit of tension as the plot progresses and you can’t help but feel involved with these characters. I actually didn’t mind all the reading, in fact, that’s what immersed me in the game. There’s an actual story and mystery here. Aside from that, the graphics are very well done and the learning curve is pretty simple. The cases ramp up in difficulty bit by bit without being too hard.

 

No Like?

Honestly, I could have lost the whole British accent text. It made the dialogue hard to read. Maybe if there had been some voice-acting in the beginning so I could hear what the characters sounded like, it wouldn’t have been as bad. In addition, there are times where the conclusions that you draw from the evidence seem far-fetched. Towards the end, I was a little confused as to what to do because the little deductions box didn’t fill in even when I found the right piece of evidence. There’s also zero replay value here, but it seems like there will likely be another entry in this series based on the ending.

 

Agree? Disagree? Write your comments below.

Read our other app reviews.

 

Basic Info

• 1 player game with multiple save slots
• Free for the first 2 levels then $4.98 for cases 3-9
• 146MB
• Rated 12+ for some mild violence

 

Weblinks

Layton Brothers Mystery Room on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/layton-brothers-mystery-room/id640517092?mt=8

Developer – Level 5