A true gentleman leaves no puzzle unsolved but Professor Layton and the New World of Steam is still a bit of one. Level 5 today dropped a new trailer and a pretty big release window of 2025 for the next game in the popular puzzle franchise.
You can watch the trailer below for Professor Layton and the New World of Steam, which was posted on YouTube.
As the trailer, which is in Japanese, shows the new game is somewhat of a departure for the franchise, which found its home on the Nintendo DS series of handhelds. The lack of a second screen has changed some things around as it looks like puzzle may occur in the same space as the game screen instead of popping up into the second screen and that notes can now be taken directly on the puzzle itself. There’s also the fact that the whole thing just looks better and, for the first time in the franchise, we’ll be getting full voice acting it seems not just in the cutscenes.
New World of Steam will steer the franchise back towards Professor Layton and his trusty assistant Luke, ditching Katrielle, the Professor’s mysterious daughter, as the protagonist. The game takes place one year after our heroes’ last outing, Professor Layton and the Unbound Future, in a town called Steam Bison where advanced steam engines have created a technologically advanced society. But mystery still abounds and Layton is there to solve it after a mysterious incident occurs.
The website also has the game releasing on the Nintendo Switch and gives the release window as 2025. However, Nintendo is rumored to be releasing the Switch’s successor in 2024, meaning the game could also be landing for that system as well. Maybe the note-taking on screen is a hint that we’ll be getting a stylus with the “Switch 2” or maybe Professor Layton and the New World of Steam is just going to land on the Switch alone and be the platform’s last great hurrah.
