professor layton and the new world of steam Archives

Let’s Talk About the Level-5 Showcase

Video games 2 Responses » Tagged with: professor layton and the new world of steam

Apr 102026

On Monday, when we discussed the Level-5 showcase announced for today, I asked if we were excited.

The answer for me turned out to be no, as I completely forgot about it.

In fact, someone had to send me a message asking if I was watching the Level-5 stream for me to even remember that it was today. It had completely slipped my mind.

Considering Level-5 was one of my favorite developers, I guess that settles how much recent developments have influenced me.

But the showcase was this morning, so let’s take a look at what they showed, and be sure to check out the full stream for yourself if you want.

The theme for this showcase was “craftsmanship,” and they began by talking about how the advent of AI has them reflecting on what human craftsmanship is, which would be an encouraging way to start out if not for how much they’ve emphasized using generative AI as part of the process.

Leaving that aside for now, the first game they announced was a mobile puzzle game called Pufflings: Journey Through a Fantasy World that’s also going to have tie-in animated films and merchandise. Next up was an expansion for the mobile game Yokai Watch: Wibble Wobble (which was originally imagined as a new Yokai Watch game before being revamped for Wibble Wobble, so that’s painful, too). Fantasy Life i is also coming to mobile.

Snack World is getting a remake, Snack World: Reloaded for PS5, Switch 2, and PC.

Tiny teasers were shown for the Inazuma Eleven remake and Decapolice, which doesn’t even have a release window now, just “in development.” Holy Horror Mansion also got a new trailer with no release window in sight.

After that, they showed an Inazuma Eleven mobile game and a Switch 2 port of Victory Road, and then it was time for Professor Layton and the New World of Steam.

It looks good, and I really want to be excited. (I had to laugh a little at the trailer calling it “the 7th installment in the Professor Layton series,” though. We’re just not counting Layton’s Mystery Journey at all now.) It’s also now coming to the PS5 and PC in addition to the Switch and Switch 2 versions, with a release window set for later this year.

Professor Layton and the New World of Steam got a large chunk of time compared to the other games in the showcase, so it seems like it will be the next major game they focus on now that Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road and Fantasy Life i are out.

This should be a time of great excitement for someone who loves the Professor Layton series as much as I do, but I’d like some reassurance that they didn’t use generative AI in its development before I can feel properly enthusiastic again. Right now, I just find it difficult to muster up excitement.

How do you feel about the games shown in today’s Level-5 showcase?

Professor Layton and the New World of Steam Delayed to 2026, New Gameplay

Sep 262025

Professor Layton and the New World of Steam got a new trailer at TGS… and also a delay announcement.

It’s not a huge surprise; getting this late into 2025 without a release date made it seem pretty likely it was no longer set for this year.

On the other hand, I still remember being disappointed that it probably wouldn’t be out in 2023, and since then its 2024 release window has been pushed to 2025 and now 2026.

(Let’s just hope this isn’t a repeat of the Inazuma Eleven situation, with its constant delays.)

All right, with the delay news out of the way, let’s take a look at the new trailer.

The trailer doesn’t have subtitles yet, although the description says they will be added later.

As it is, we get some great new shots of Layton and Luke, and we also get to see some gameplay. It’s a short segment, but it looks very Layton – visiting a location from the map, tapping a character to get a puzzle, etc. Unfortunately, there isn’t much new shown.

The music choice is also… unique, and I cracked up listening to it. A Professor Layton rap was not on my bingo card.

There also was a playable TGS demo, and some players have uploaded videos, such as this one:

For me, the demo footage was great to see, because it really feels like Layton. There were some concerns when it was first announced, but it doesn’t look like they’ve made any drastic changes to the gameplay we know and love.

I’m looking forward to Professor Layton and the New World of Steam, although I can’t help but worry about it with all these delays. Still, Fantasy Life i saw numerous delays as well and came out to great reviews (I haven’t played it yet), so maybe the same will happen here.

What do you think of the latest New World of Steam videos?

Let’s Talk About the Level-5 Showcase

Video games 3 Responses » Tagged with: decapolice, fantasy life, inazuma eleven, professor layton and the new world of steam, yokai watch

Sep 252024

Yesterday was the Level-5 Vision 2024 showcase, and it was a mix of highs and lows.

They started with Fantasy Life i. We already knew it had been delayed from its October 10 release date, and it sounds like that was done to make it even bigger (and hopefully better). I have mixed feelings about that, but fortunately the game looks great!

I do find it amusing that they’re marketing it as having “the largest open world in the history of Fantasy Life,” considering that as far as most people are concerned, this is only the second game. It’s technically the third, because of the mobile game, but still.

Anyway, Fantasy Life i has been delayed all the way to April 2025. Well, at least that gives me time to catch up (hah) on my backlog.

The next game they showed was Professor Layton and the New World of Steam.

As a huge Professor Layton fan, this is the one I’m the most excited about, and I loved what I saw. The town being menaced by a ghostly gunslinger named Gunman King Joe is the sort of insanity I look for in my Professor Layton plots. On top of that, the gameplay looks like exactly what I’d expect from the series – with even a glimpse of the map used for traversal – now in a 3D world.

Some of the characters looked a little off to me, especially Luke, but overall I’m really excited for New World of Steam.

It still only has a general 2025 release window, but at least it hasn’t been delayed yet.

The next trailer was for Decapolice, showing off the theme song and several of the characters (why are these characters named things like Harvard and Cambridge?), and it all looks pretty neat. I started to think that maybe Decapolice wasn’t delayed even farther out after all.

But it is. Decapolice is now set for 2026.

They didn’t give specific reasons for the delay, only that they’re evolving it into a better experience, which has that same “bigger and better” impression I got from Fantasy Life i.

After that, they finally showcased Megaton Musashi W: Wired, to announce a new mode and other additional content being added in November.

Next up was the long-delayed Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road. The new trailer introduced a ton of stuff, such as a new mode with a customizable character and town-building, and ended by saying it “will evolve into a game that can be played infinitely.” It’s now set for June 2025.

This speaks to the same thing that has me worried about Fantasy Life i and Decapolice. It’s good that they want their games to have a lot of content, but it feels like they’re pushing that so hard that they can’t actually finish them.

After that, they revealed a remake of the first Inazuma Eleven, set for 2026. That was the first of their two new games.

The second was, as expected, the Yokai Watch spiritual successor that was teased last year. Now, this is the game behind the “Ghost Craft RPG” trademark, but apparently that is actually what they’re calling the genre. The game itself is called Holy Horror Mansion, which I’m not crazy about as a title.

You use a camera to interact with ghosts, and while there is definitely some Yokai Watch DNA here, it looks very different. Its release date is “Who knows?” so at least they’re self-aware when it comes to the delays.

The announcement of Holy Horror Mansion made a lot of Yokai Watch fans lose their minds. With the game being teased as the next concept for Yokai Watch, a lot of people expected it to look and play like a new Yokai Watch. I don’t share those complaints. While I’d love to see more Yokai Watch, Holy Horror Mansion looks like it could be a fun game in its own right.

Unfortunately, my impressions were tarnished by the concerns that the backgrounds used in the teaser trailer were made with generative AI. I don’t support the use of generative AI in creative works, so that was disheartening to see. Now, I can’t actually tell if art is AI or not unless there’s something blatantly wrong with it. Maybe it’s just concept art with some oddities. But you can take a look at the evidence and see what you think.

The more concerning part is that this controversy led to people bringing up a report from Level-5 last year about how they were using AI in their work, which includes using ChatGPT to come up with concepts/details for side quests in Decapolice. Now that’s disheartening. Experiencing stories thought up by AI just isn’t what I want to do. At all. Even aside from all the other AI concerns, that makes it feel like those side quests are just filler, nothing that really matters to the world, since their concepts could just be generated.

So yes. I love Level-5’s games, and I think their upcoming games look great, but between the constant delays, the apparent scope creep, and now the AI concerns, I ended up with mixed feelings about the whole thing. Maybe the long delay to 2026 is enough time for them to change their minds about using AI?

How do you feel about the games shown in yesterday’s Level-5 showcase?

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