Professor Layton and the Curious Village has been an unexpected hit on DS. And yet, after a couple of hours spent in the Prof’s estimable company, it’s easy to understand why the game is still climbing the UK software charts nearly six months after launch. Coincidentally, that’s about as long as we’ll have to wait for the sequel to arrive too…

That’s the news from developers Level 5 at the San Francisco Game Developers Conference yesterday. The Japanese outfit has already released a trilogy of Layton titles on home soil, and is currently in the midst of producing the next three - as well as a Professor Layton Movie. It’ll certainly be interesting to see how the puzzle-based gameplay translates to the silver screen.

Until that stellar premiere (we’re picturing Vin Diesel in the lead role) Level 5 studio boss, Akihiro Hino, reveals that his team is currently localising the next game for western release. It’s called Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box - and he hopes it‘ll be here within six short months. Better still Hino says that he wants to make all six Layton games available in the West eventually.

Bring them all on. ‘Cos Layton puzzles - we poop ‘em!