Sometimes, a mystery is surrounded by a puzzle; sometimes dozens of small, intricate puzzles that would confound and befuddle your average government agent.

Hidden away in the depths of FBI headquarters is the office of Nelson Tethers. Tethers is the top (and only) agent in the bureau’s Department of Puzzle Research. When a conundrum is too discombobulating for the rest of the FBI, it is up to Agent Tethers to elucidate the situation in Telltale’s latest, Puzzle Agent.

The first thing you’ll notice with Puzzle Agent is a departure from Telltale’s usual style of point and click adventure gaming. Sure, those elements are there in a small way, but the main focus of the game is on brain teasers. It is no secret that Puzzle Agent was heavily inspired by Level-5′s popular Professor Layton series on the Nintendo DS. They come right out and say as much in the game’s description on their website.

Set in the snowy town of Scoggins, MN, it is your job to find out why the town’s eraser factory has shut down. The factory provides erasers to the White House, and is Scoggin’s main source of income; which is why it’s sudden closure is so suspicious.

Much like the Layton series that inspired it, Puzzle Agent has you wandering the town, finding and solving logic puzzles to continue the storyline. The puzzles are worked into the plot a little smoother than they are in Layton, and are handled in mostly humorous ways. The puzzles themselves vary quite a bit in difficulty. As with all logic puzzles, once you “get” the answer, you’ll wonder how you didn’t see it in the first place.

If you do get stumped, Puzzle Agent has a really good hint system built in. There are three levels of hints, which start as a nudge in the right direction and end with more or less giving you the answer. Once the puzzle is solved, you are given a rating based on how many guesses it took you to solve and how many hints used. This made me try my hardest to not use any hints and only make a guess once I was absolutely sure I had the answer correct.

But they don’t give you an infinite number of hints either. As it turns out, chewing gum helps Agent Tethers think, but the town is all out of gum! As you traverse the town, you will find ABC gum stuck to things around the city which you can collect. These are what you spend to take a hint on puzzles. I’m happy to say I didn’t end up needing to use too many pieces of the gum that I collected on my adventure, but even if you do, there seems to be plenty of the stuff hidden around the city. Running out was never a concern.

I had fun playing through Puzzle Agent. The art by Graham Annable added a humorous edge to the games strange atmosphere. The writing will appeal to those that enjoy X-Files or Twilight Zone story types, as long as you don’t mind them being on the wacky side of things. The gameplay is casual enough that it should appeal to gamers of all levels. Puzzle Agent is an easy recommendation for the puzzle lover in your life.

This review is based on review code of the PC version of Puzzle Agent provided to us by Telltale Games.