Professor Layton series' next adventure won't star Professor Layton

A new mainline Professor Layton game is now in the works, Level-5 announced on a livestream this week. The game is currently unscheduled and without platforms, but it does have a hero — and it's not the titular professor.

Instead, CEO Akihiro Hino showed concept art of several new characters and the game's setting while teasing that the new Professor "Layton" may not be a Layton at all. The star won't be the character's son Alfendi, who starred in the iOS spinoff Layton Brothers: Mystery Room. Hino neglected to offer any further clues as to who the lead detective could be, or whether the Layton family, Luke or other major characters will appear.

Professor Layton's second handheld game trilogy wrapped in 2014 with Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy on Nintendo 3DS. Later that year, he co-starred with Capcom star Phoenix Wright in a crossover adventure, but the professor has rarely been seen since. A mobile spinoff, Layton 7, hit Japan last year, where the professor was joined by six other new characters in a team-based duel between vampires and humans.

There are no plans to bring that game, which diverges from the typical puzzle genre of the series, to the U.S. Instead, Professor Layton continues to be best known for its Nintendo DS and 3DS puzzle games, which spawned an animated feature film.