The next mainline entry in the cult classic Professor Layton series was recently revealed, and its newly published store page has confirmed that the series as a whole has sold over 18 million units total.
The upcoming game is called Professor Layton and the New World of Steam and its reveal took place in the recently streamed February 8 Nintendo Direct. A teaser showed off a short clip of the titular character in a steampunk city, though virtually nothing else has been revealed about the title.
The last true mainline Professor Layton game first launched in 2013 for the Nintendo 3DS and since then, it's been nothing but spinoffs and crossovers, so many fans were wondering if a full-blown Professor Layton was ever going to grace the Nintendo Switch, or if the series had been mostly retired. The question has now been answered to fans' applause.
With this new piece of info relayed by the New World of Steam store page, the title now seems like a no-brainer. Professor Layton is, by all parameters, a smaller title. It's not the franchise that most or even a large portion of Nintendo gamers have played.
However, the first title released in 2007, so 18 million sales over the course of 16 years is no small accomplishment either, and given that the games have always been on the lower end of the scale, in terms of budget, it only makes sense from a financial perspective for developer Level-5 and publisher Nintendo to continue to support the series.
That 2007 game that started it all was Professor Layton and the Curious Village. That was the first of the game's original trilogy, which was then followed by a prequel trilogy that ended in 2014. The last title that's technically considered part of the mainline series was 2017's Layton's Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires' Conspiracy, though this title received a mixed reception and actually didn't feature the titular Professor, instead giving the protagonist role to his daughter.
The titles can be described as puzzle-adventure games, where an overarching story unfolds via visual novel sequences, while the Professor performs all different types of puzzles (logic puzzles, spatial puzzles, etc.) to get closer to the truth.