Play Professor Layton and the Unwound Future Online

Summary

Professor Layton and the Unwound Future (known overseas as Professor Layton and the Lost Future) keeps the series’ signature blend of brain‑teasing puzzles and charming adventure. You wander through static, hand‑drawn locations on the DS, tapping characters to spark dialogue or to uncover a new puzzle, and you can hunt the background for hidden hint coins—sometimes you have to tap a spot several times before a secret appears. The game expands the hint system with a "super hint" that costs two coins and only becomes available after you’ve exhausted the three regular hints, giving you a near‑solution without outright spoiling the answer. Solving puzzles rewards you with picarats, the in‑game currency, while wrong answers shave the amount you can earn on later tries. Beyond the main challenges, Layton’s Bag unlocks three quirky mini‑games—a sticker‑book puzzle, a parrot‑training rope maze, and a toy‑car tile‑navigation test—each offering extra puzzles you can revisit anytime. After you clear the story, a tougher bonus puzzle appears, and a suite of downloadable weekly puzzles (now offline) once kept the brain‑gym fresh for months.

Storyline

In Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, Layton and his apprentice Luke are invited to watch Dr. Alain Stahngun demonstrate a time‑machine. The experiment goes wrong, causing Stahngun and Prime Minister Bill Hawks to vanish, and a wave of missing scientists follows. A week later the duo receives a letter that appears to be from Luke ten years in the future, leading them to a hidden clock shop in a London back alley. The shop’s elderly owners reveal another time‑machine disguised as a giant clock, thrusting Layton and Luke into a quasi‑steam‑punk London a decade ahead, where they meet a Future Luke.

Future Luke tells them that in this timeline Layton has become the head of a mafia‑like organization called the Family, which now controls the city. Determined to stop this Future Layton, they briefly return to their own time to research files about the accident that killed Layton’s girlfriend Claire ten years earlier, then jump back to the future, unintentionally bringing Flora, Inspector Chelmey and his assistant Barton along. While searching for Future Layton, Luke grows uneasy about his family’s upcoming move overseas, but Layton reassures him that their friendship will endure.

Their investigation leads them through Chinatown and up a massive pagoda, where they confront Future Layton, revealed to be Dr. Stahngun—actually Dimitri Allen—who has taken Bill hostage in a desperate bid to rebuild a time‑machine and rescue Claire. Don Paolo, disguised as Layton, aids them in freeing the captive scientists and meeting Claire’s near‑identical sister Celeste (who is in fact Claire herself). The pair discover the “future” London is a cavern‑built replica designed to motivate the scientists, and that the true mastermind is Future Luke, a boy named Clive seeking revenge for his parents’ death in the same accident. Clive hijacks a mobile fortress, but with Don Paolo’s help the heroes reverse its power, free Bill, and cause the fortress to collapse. Claire, whose presence is unstable, bids Layton a tearful farewell before disappearing back to the moment of her death. Layton, heart‑broken yet at peace, removes his hat as snow falls, and later receives a letter from Luke inviting him to a new mystery.