Branching Path: Professor Layton and the New World of Steam could be a return to form

I've got a love-hate relationship with Level-5 these days; as much as I enjoyed my time with Professor Layton and the New World of Steam at this year's Tokyo Game Show, we've been here before - and there's no way to tell if the game will actually be releasing anytime soon. After all, last year when I asked about the litany of games that were then-slated to release in 2023, it was a representative at the booth that spilled the beans that everything was getting delayed before Level-5 officially confirmed matters. As of last week, of the games showcased for "2023" at last year's show, only one of the titles has actually been released. Decapolice, my game of the show last year, is now slated for 2026 alongside an anime adaptation; mercifully, it will also receive a PC release at the same time now, but it's brutal to see how long Level-5 is taking to release their upcoming titles, when they've been so promising to demo. Any excitement I may have had after playing Professor Layton feels like it ought to be tempered with the idea that we might be looking at a game still 3 years away.

Setting that thought aside, it occurs to me to explain Professor Layton. While anyone in our audience that owned a Nintendo DS already knows about the puzzling gentleman, I realize that it's been so long since he's been a genuine household name that there's likely a portion of our readerbase that doesn't even know what these games are at their core. While they're not anywhere near RPGs - unless in your book that stands for "Rather Polite Gentleman" - they're a series of puzzle games, that were predominantly featured on the Nintendo DS, and then 3DS. There have been Professor Layton games on mobile phones and the Switch - but most of those have been either spinoffs or ports, and it remains that the series' heyday was on the DS, with the series languishing a bit after the death of its puzzle master in 2016. Puzzles, alongside a plot with a central backing mystery, has long been the selling point of the franchise, and from first glance at New World of Steam, that remains the case. We don't know too much about the plot yet; it takes place one year after Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, and it takes place in Steam Bison, America. Beyond that - details are scarce for now.

With the majority of the series prior being on the DS or 3DS, naturally a lot of Professor Layton's traditional puzzles made use of the touch screen in interesting ways; so one of my first thoughts was exactly how that might translate to a Nintendo Switch docked, with a controller. During our hands-on session we had the chance to try out two puzzles; both of which had us using the analog stick to control a cursor to ineract with the puzzle's mechanisms. These puzzles themselves weren't timed - but due to the nature of a time limit imposed by the showfloor demo, we didn't have too long to get ourselves comfortable with the setup. It works fine enough, and I imagine players will be able to just use the touch screen when playing in handheld mode on Switch. 

In-between puzzles, players explore the town; exploration is scene-based, and you can move between different sections of the town with the dpad, with the locations you can visit being limited to your progression through the game. Your destination's direction will be marked so you know which direction is for progression; and anywhere you've previously visited you can return to easily with the world map screen. Periodically you'll be able to find Hint Coins with the use of Luke's new invention, the Coindar - a toy-sized robot which gives you hints for items to interact with in specific scenes. These hint coins are your currency that you can spend to request hints in puzzles. It's a cute little distraction - I only got to use it a few times, but it seems promising enough for the full game, as a means of breaking up monotony. 

With all this talk of puzzles, the other major concern I had before tackling the demo was a more personal one; I'm confident enough in my Japanese, but maybe not so much when it's a timed demo for a puzzle game, especially one that has - in the past - had plenty of wordplay. Thankfully, despite what we'd initially been told, Professor Layton actually had an English build of the demo for TGS attendees to play - and we even had the chance to capture about 10 minutes of footage of it, which you'll be able to find above. It's perfectly fine so far; it's hard to make any real statements on it at this time, but it more than gets the job done, and it's nothing fancy. There's no English dub as of yet; maybe there will be one by launch, but we completely forgot to ask, seeing as our appointment was more off-the-cuff than planned, like last year's was; with so many of the same games showcase, we weren't originally going to schedule an appointment at all. It was only when we noticed just how few outlets were covering Layton that we decided to give it a look.

While I wouldn't say I walked away from Layton as impressed with it as I was with Decapolice last year, Level-5 still delivered one of the most memorable demos of the show, 2 years running - which makes their whole situation that much more depressing. While Professor Layton is currently scheduled for 2025, at this point I have less than zero trust in Level-5 sticking to a release window. If it turns out to be the case that players will be reunited with Hershel next year, I'll be more than happy to be wrong. As of right now, however, I'm not exactly holding my breath that things will stick on schedule. Regardless of how long it takes, I can only hope some of these promising projects can turn into success for Level-5. It seems that the company still has plenty of incredible developers working over there, and it would be a real shame if the company's bid at a revival ends up a flop. We'll have to wait any see, when Professor Layton and the New World of Steam supposedly launches for Nintendo Switch, in 2025.