Hands On: Professor Layton & The New World Of Steam
Image: Level-5
It has been a while since weâve seen Professor Layton and his protege Luke. For a while, the mind-bending puzzle series seemed like a Nintendo mainstay – at least on the DS and 3DS. The last game starred Katrielle Layton, the daughter of the titular Professor, and received rather mixed reviews when it came out for 3DS in 2017 and on Switch a couple of years later in Deluxe form.
This makes Professor Layton and the New World of Steam, releasing sometime in 2025, not only the first series entry for a while but also a return-to-the-roots adventure with the Professor himself back in the leading role, meaning we were especially looking forward to trying it out on the show floor at this yearâs Tokyo Game Show.
The demo begins with a fully voiced Layton and Luke exploring a steampunk city known for technological advancements, looking for a building called the Eggmuffin Workshop. Using a Pro Controllerâs joystick as a pointer, we could click around the map and ask some gruff local residents where said workshop was located. No one really knew, so we used the d-pad to flip to another screen, as this adventure doesnât put you in direct control like the previous titles. We missed their touchscreen controls, though.
Image: Level-5
Here, Luke interrupted our mission to introduce Coindar, a tiny little robot he invented that helps you find hint coins hidden throughout the city. When coins are available, Coindar will give you a word-based clue: this time around, he hinted that the coins could be found near headlights which, when we clicked on a steampunk truck suspended in a workshop, awarded us with five hint coins to use…
Which wouldâve been great to remember because we were then thrown into a puzzle, helping a local connect some of the wires of her workshop. To do so, we had to click on nodes and create four âLâ shapes without using the same node twice.
Anyone who has played a Layton game knows that some puzzles can absolutely stump you if you overthink them. They also likely know you can completely miss the point of a puzzle if you do not read the instructions on the left side of the screen thoroughly, which we didnât. For some reason, we assumed the wires of each âLâ shape could not cross over each other, which made the puzzle impossible. We also forgot to use our hint coins.
Maybe this was because we were used to the instructions being on one screen of a Nintendo 3DS with the puzzle on the other, rather than both on the same screen. Thatâs the excuse weâre going with.
The demo, even for press, lasted only 10 minutes and we embarrassingly ran out of time fiddling around with a rather simple puzzle and spending a little too long talking to the locals. We then had to humbly request another go, which was granted.
This time around, we cleared the puzzle with ease by taking our time to fully read the rules, earning the full amount of points (known as Picarats) for doing so. The booth staff cheered us on as we were determined to see every puzzle the demo had to offer before our time ran out, of which there were two more.
But our attempt at a puzzle speedrun was interrupted by what appeared to be a literal ghost called the Gunman King. Decked out in a cowboy hat and wielding a revolver, the purple phantom delivered a monologue about stopping technological advancement in the city before pointing the gun right at Layton and Luke and then vanishing. The Professor, ever the sceptic, insisted ghosts do not exist, while Luke wasnât so sure.
This was the third fully voiced cutscene we experienced, so it looks like the duo will have a lot more to say this time around. Laytonâs Japanese voice actor Yo Oizumi returns, but Luke features a new (but appropriately boyish) voice done by Mio Imada.
After the Gunman King evaporated, we solved two more puzzles on our way to the Eggmuffin Workshop: a tram had stopped in the middle of a road, so we had to solve a puzzle involving rotating several pieces of track to make a connected loop, and then after that had to help a man find parts for his stalled motorcycle. The motorcycle, of course, blocked our way to the Eggmuffin Workshop, which was a fantastical building with all sorts of gears and contraptions protruding from it.
Image: Level-5
This required us to open the world map â which can be accessed at almost any time â and travel back to the beginning of the demo to speak with a gruff shopkeeper who gave us the parts for free, yet insisted we solve a little conundrum for him anyway. Layton and Luke, always down for a good puzzle, obliged.
This final puzzle involved a mouse in a room full of crates with three pieces of cheese. The mouse could only reach one of the three pieces of cheese and we had to deduce which one by examining the heights of the containers to reveal a path toward it. This was the simplest puzzle, yielding the smallest amount of points, and when we finished it so too did our demo – with five seconds of game time left.
Unfortunately, we didnât get to see what the Eggmuffin Workshop was all about, but we did learn that Professor Layton and the New World of Steam looks like a return to form for the series with a curious new ghostly antagonist we canât help but think is a Scooby Doo-like projection of some neâer-do-well.
More importantly, weâre looking forward to more challenging puzzles that the series is known for, though weâll be sure to fully read the rules next time.
Professor Layton & The New World of Steam is scheduled to launch on Nintendo Switch sometime in 2025.
