Professor Layton and the New World of Steam Release Date Announced
Professor Layton thinking
Level-5 held its Vision II showcase earlier today, focusing on five upcoming games set to be released across multiple platforms in the coming years. Among those games included was Professor Layton and the New World of Steam, a brand-new Layton game that was announced in February during a Nintendo Direct — and it’s got a release window.
The showcase showed off a new trailer for the game, and one that’s far more extensive than the teensy teaser we saw during the Direct. In it, we see Luke and Professor Layton himself exploring the eponymous New World of Steam, a steampunk city with blimps, cars, and steam-powered trolleys. It’s all very fresh and equally very cute.
It’s also worth noting that everything here is 3D, from the town and the backdrops to the characters themselves, all of it is 3D, save for a few key elements that use 3D drawings instead. It’s an absolutely gorgeous art style, reminiscent of something like Ni no Kuni II – one of the best anime games – while still keeping the signature charm and style of the series beloved by so many.
After poking around for a bit, Layton and Luke start to solve a puzzle, and this is the big showstopper. The duo needs to figure out which door they can enter on a building, and to do this, must count the differently shaped windows. Normally, in prior Layton games, this would cut away to a different screen with a simplified representation, but here, the puzzle solving UI pops up right over the world you’ve just been exploring — you literally solve the puzzle of the world in front of you.
It’s a very novel approach to a puzzle, and while we’d like to see an entire game built on this premise, we imagine there will be some more traditional puzzles in there too. That’s probably a good thing — while the idea is nice, you’d probably end up alienating some fans if that were the entire game.
At the end of the trailer, we get the information everyone’s been looking for, a release date. Professor Layton and the New World of Steam will be released at some point in 2025, exclusively on the Nintendo Switch.
Yes, that’s a bit of a wait, but seriously, look at that trailer above and tell me it’s not everything you dreamed of. If the rest of the game looks and plays like that, we’re in for an absolute delight.
