Professor Layton and the Unwound Future is a point-and-click puzzle adventure developed by LEVEL-5 and released for the Nintendo DS in 2008, the third entry in the Professor Layton series. Players navigate a series of static location screens, tapping on characters to initiate dialogue or trigger puzzles, and searching backgrounds for hidden hint coins. The story unfolds through conversation and approximately 32 minutes of fully animated cutscenes. Puzzles span a wide range of brainteaser types, including visual, mathematical, and logic challenges, with no time limit imposed on solving them. Up to three hints can be purchased using hint coins, and a new "super hint" option — exclusive to this installment — is available after all three standard hints are revealed, at a cost of two coins, and nearly discloses the full solution. Correct answers award Picarats, though incorrect guesses reduce the maximum available on subsequent attempts. Previously skipped puzzles can be revisited at dedicated locations as the game progresses.
As Layton and Luke are invited to witness a demonstration of a time machine built by Dr. Alain Stahngun, the experiment goes awry, causing the disappearance of Stahngun and the prime minister, Bill Hawks. A week later, as numerous scientists have been reported missing, Layton and Luke receive a letter purporting to be from Luke ten years in the future, leading the two to a quaint clock shop in the London back alleys. Inside, the old couple show the two another time machine in the guise of a giant clock, and they find themselves in a drastically-changed quasi-steam punk London ten years from their present, where they meet the Future Luke. He explains that in this future, Layton has become the head of a mafia-like mob known as the Family and taken control of London, and decides to assist him. After briefly returning to the past to look up some files pertaining to an accident which claimed the life of his girlfriend, Claire, ten years ago, Layton and Luke return to the future London, inadvertently bringing Flora, Inspector Chelmey and his assistant Barton with him. As the group investigates the whereabouts of Future Layton, Luke is reminded that he will soon be moving with his parents.
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