2025 Preview: Professor Layton and the New World of Steam is a welcome return for a puzzling pro

19 hours ago 23

If the hints dropped by the CEO of Level-5 are to be taken at face value, the return of Professor Layton was mainly down to Nintendo.

During a discussion at Tokyo Game Show in October 2023, Ahikiro Hino explained that he was basically done with the series and felt that it had reached a “beautiful” conclusion, so had no inclination to make another one. That is, until he received what he calls a “strong push from company N”.

According to Hino, “certain individuals from the industry really wanted us to make a new game” and so, 12 years after he hung up his top hat, Professor Hershel Layton is dusting it off and teaming up again with his never-aging apprentice Luke on another brain-teasing adventure.

It’s little wonder why Nintendo would be so keen to see the return of Professor Layton, of course: although Level-5 published the series in Japan, Nintendo handled publishing duties in the rest of the world, and each game was a big success.

The first few entries in particular were hugely popular, coming at a time when the DS was getting plaudits in the mainstream press for its range Brain Training games. We recall the first couple of games being sold out in the UK for decent periods of time, and at the last count, the entire series has sold more than 18 million copies worldwide.

As you may have guessed by the title, Professor Layton and the New World of Steam sees Layton and Luke traveling to an all-new location with a steampunk aesthetic. The town in question is located in America and goes by the name of Steam Bison, where the advent of advanced steam engines has sparked something of an industrial revolution (they’re lucky they named the town that, in hindsight).

According to the deliberately vague plot, after a “mysterious incident” takes place in Steam Bison, Luke gets in touch with Layton and invites him over to check it out and see what’s going on. Level-5 has revealed that the game’s villain is a ghost-like cowboy called Gunman King Joe, but other than that the developer is remaining firmly tight-lipped on the details.

While we’re excited to see the return of Professor Layton after all these years, there are a few queries that remain unanswered at this stage. Firstly, will the game’s puzzles live up to those of the original games?

The series’ puzzle designer Akira Tago passed away three years after the last game, and when a spin-off starring Layton’s daughter was released a year later with a new puzzle designer at the helm, reviews criticised some of the puzzles for having nonsensical solutions. This time the puzzles are being handled by a group called QuizKnock, so it remains to be seen if they’ll live up to expectations.

Another potential stumbling block is how the game will play on a TV: the DS and 3DS versions worked a treat with a stylus, giving a true ‘interactive puzzle book’ feel as players circled, tapped and wrote their answers in. While the Switch still has a touchscreen, some people prefer to play docked and that might lessen that tactile feel somewhat.

Regardless of this, we’d rather see Level-5 have a go at it anyway than deciding Layton should stay retired forever, so when New World of Steam is released you can be sure we’ll be there, thinking caps in hand.