Level 5's new DS game

Japanese developer Level 5 is working on a new DS game called Professor Layton and the Mysterious Village, aiming to combine a fantasy setting with the sort of brainy puzzles that have become a bit popular on the handheld.

Announced in Tokyo earlier today, the game stars Professor Reiton (Layton), an English chap, and a young schoolboy called Luke. That's about all we could grasp, although the official website makes it look a bit like a cross between TinTin and Oliver Twist.

Anyway, Layton will be produced by Akihiro Hino, but the puzzle side of it will be given some attention by Akira Tago, author of a series of books in Japan (reports suggest them to be of the "brain-teasing" sort). Level 5 obviously has some pedigree on the RPG front, having worked most notably on things like Dark Cloud, Rogue Galaxy and Dragon Quest, so it'll be interesting to see how it all turns out.

And it shouldn't be too long before we - or the Japanese at least - do, either, with Layton due out on 15th February 2007. We'll let you know more soon, but in the meantime you can tinker on the site linked above or this slightly different one.