Top 5 Hopes for Professor Layton and the New World of Steam

With Professor Layton and the New World of Steam not due out until 2025, there’s still a lot we don’t know about it.

If you’ve seen any of my comments on it before, you know I’m both excited and nervous about finally getting a new Professor Layton game.

When I got into the Professor Layton series, it skyrocketed to the top of my list. It was one of my few “immediate preorder” series, a series I had so much faith in I would immediately preorder any new entry.

Then came Layton’s Mystery Journey, which I had… mixed feelings about.

So now, nearly 7 years later, my feelings about Professor Layton and the New World of Steam aren’t “of course it’ll be great, it’s a Professor Layton game” so much as “please be good, please be good, please be good…”

With that in mind, here are my top 5 hopes for Professor Layton and the New World of Steam.

5. A Stylus

This is the most inconsequential of my hopes, but it still deserves to be mentioned. The Professor Layton series started out on the DS and then moved to the 3DS, both of which come with a stylus to use on the touchscreen. With its puzzle-based gameplay, Professor Layton is a series that expects you to write on the touchscreen.

Even in the brief New World of Steam gameplay demonstration, you can see how a stylus would help.

But unlike the DS and 3DS, the Switch doesn’t come with its own stylus. When Layton’s Mystery Journey got ported to the Switch, players had to either adapt to controlling it without a stylus or use their own. Since New World of Steam is a brand-new entry, I can’t help but hope they’ll include a stylus with it to make that a bit easier.

4. Normal Professor Layton Structure

The normal Professor Layton game structure is simple. You visit a new area and tap around the screen looking for hint coins, hidden puzzles, and dialogue, you solve puzzles (some required and some optional), and then you progress the story and repeat the process. At certain points, you’ll be blocked from progressing if you haven’t solved enough puzzles, and of course, more puzzles will appear at different points of the game.

I still don’t quite know what to make about the claim that New World of Steam’s city will develop as you solve more puzzles, but I hope it doesn’t mark a meaningful departure from the usual structure. Switching to a city-development focus, for example… doesn’t sound good.

But it might just be a fancy way of describing the usual story progression, or some sort of side activity, so I have my fingers crossed that the game will follow the standard Professor Layton structure after all.

Oh, and now that I mentioned it, having a mini-game or two to break up the flow is a fun series’ tradition I hope New World of Steam maintains as well.

3. An Absurd Twist

This is a Professor Layton game. I want the story to culminate in an absurd plot twist that turns everything on its head, that manages to survive suspension of disbelief solely because emotions are running so high that you’ll forgive it a few leaps in logic. That’s what Professor Layton games do.

We know very little about New World of Steam’s story so far, except that Layton goes to Steam Bison in America to help Luke solve a mystery. Whatever that mystery is, I hope it’s seemingly impossible only to eventually be explained with a “logical” explanation even harder to believe than the original mystery.

Yes, sometimes Professor Layton twists push suspension of disbelief too far, like in the case of Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright, where the ending disappointed me so much it nearly soured my overall thoughts on the game, but the lack of stakes in Layton’s Mystery Journey made me realize I’ll take that sort of insanely illogical twist that you can tell the writers were passionate about over that game’s style of low-stakes, low-energy storytelling any day.

I’ve waited this many years for a new Professor Layton game. I need the big twist to be appropriately over-the-top.

2. Good Puzzles

This is the part that could make or break the game. Professor Layton is a puzzle series, so the puzzle quality is hugely important. Akira Tago, the “puzzle master,” passed away prior to Layton Mystery Journey, and the puzzles suffered for it.

A group called QuizKnock has been brought in to design New World of Steam’s puzzles, so I have my fingers crossed it will be a return to form. I’ve seen positive impressions of their puzzles online, so here’s hoping it feels like the style of Professor Layton puzzles we know and love.

1. Excellent Storytelling

But if there’s one thing I’m even more nervous about than the quality of the puzzles, it’s the quality of the story.

I’ve touched upon this with my previous points already, but Layton’s Mystery Journey had such a low-stakes, disconnected story that it didn’t win me over like the other stories in the series. Professor Layton puzzles are fun and addicting, but it was the stories that really made the series one of my favorites. They might be ridiculous at times, but they’re always heartfelt and emotional.

I want that style of storytelling to come back. I want New World of Steam to have the sort of story where, no matter what the rest of it ends up being like, I can recommend it to people for that alone.

Right now, we don’t know much about the characters aside from the fact that both Professor Layton and Luke will be back, and we don’t know what the mystery is about. But I hope they’ve written another heartfelt story that will have me dying to know what will happen next.

Conclusion

If all of these things come to pass, New World of Steam will be another favorite. All I really want is a return to form – one that will make the Professor Layton series leap to the top of my list once again.

What are your hopes for Professor Layton and the New World of Steam?