Layton's Mystery Journey (aka Lady Layton) Gets New Trailer

Level 5 have released a new trailer for the latest game in the Professor Layton series. Formerly known as Lady Layton, the name has been changed to Layton’s Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaire’s Conspiracy. It’s a bit of a mouthful, but Layton games always are. They’ve also revealed the release date – the smartphone version will be coming out along with the Japanese 3DS version, on July 20th. The western 3DS release hasn’t been dated yet.

Sadly, the trailer is in Japanese, so you probably won’t squeeze much info about the plot from it. The story revolves around Katrielle Layton, the professor’s daughter, looking into her father’s disappearance. Her sidekick is a talking basset hound called Sharo. Meanwhile, she’ll be taking on a bunch of different, weird cases around London.

Although the western 3DS version doesn’t have a release date, the Android/iOS release will be worldwide, with support for a multitude of languages (Japanese, English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, and Korean). Thankfully, the Layton games rely almost exclusively on the touchscreen, so the transition should be smooth. The phone version will be cheaper than the one on console, but will come with “item based in-app purchases” – which probably means you’ll be able to buy hint coins. The developers have assured the public that players will be able to reach the end of the game without any additional purchase.

The trailer also shows off several puzzles, which seem to be standard Layton fare – a mixture of riddles, logical problems, slightly different takes on famous brain-twisters and such. Surprisingly, it doesn’t show any puzzles ripped straight from a newspaper’s children’s pages, which might be both good and bad – depending on how you look at it. If nothing else, the trailer is worth watching for the series’ trademark beautiful animation and excellent musical background.