TOKYO – There's something oddly familiar about Zack and Ombra's Amusement Park of Illusion, an upcoming adventure game for the Nintendo DS. Where have I seen a young man in a vaguely European city meet strangers and solve puzzles?
Of course! The answer is: the Professor Layton series.
The similarities between the two are painfully obvious. Sure, the professor and his boy companion have been replaced by a young magician and a little girl, but the game is clearly aping the Layton formula of tapping around the screen in order to find hidden challenges to overcome.
The surprising discovery I made here at the Tokyo Game Show is that Zack and Ombra's Amusement Park of Illusion is still a good deal of fun once you accept the blatant Layton envy on display.
For starters, the puzzles that the professor tackles have been largely replaced by mini-games such as rhythmic tapping exercises. Each game has multiple difficulty levels to choose from which affects how many "ombra balls" you receive as a reward. You can use the balls to skip particularly irritating games such as sliding puzzles, a regular Layton task and the bane of my existence.
In between missions, I found the animation and characters to be decently charming. Zack is likable and the people he meets are colorful enough to be amusing. I particularly liked the Ombra, small magical creatures that trigger the games you play. They are cute and wouldn't look out of place in a Hayao Miyazaki movie.
Of course, that's the other thing that this familiar-feeling game attempts to ape: Studio Ghibli. The resemblance to Japan's most famous animation studio is not exactly overwhelming, but Konami certainly wants potential customers to make that connection. While I was inspecting the Konami booth, an employee pointed at the game's poster and tried to sell me with the pitch "Miyazaki animation taste" [sic].
Zack and Ombra's Amusement Park of Illusion is slated for an October release here in Japan. There is no official word on an international version yet, but the fact that an English title already exists is a very good sign. In either case, you can actually play the demo online to try it out for yourself and see how it "tastes."
Images courtesy of Konami
