.webp)
Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu recently had the opportunity to chat with Level-5 president, Akihiro Hino, about some of the games the company recently unveiled such as the intriguing DecaPolice. Mr. Hino revealed that early in the mystery/action game’s development, DecaPolice was pinned by the team as the successor to the beloved Professor Layton series, but obviously as development progressed they decided against this as Level-5 is also working on a brand new Professor Layton game which is titled Professor Layton and The New World of Steam for the Nintendo Switch. Here’s what was said:
Interviewer: I was very surprised by Decapolice when it appeared at the LEVEL-5 VISION broadcast.
Hino: The development team has been working on the title for about three years. I think we obtained the trademark for it three years ago. The timing for getting a trademark to present the game to cross-media partners coincides with the timing of creating a proposal with a general outline of the game. In fact, I would say development was running in parallel with Megaton Musashi.
Interviewer: I see. So the two games were being developed in parallel?
Hino: I’ve been working on Decapolice more carefully than ever before, just as I have been with Megaton Musashi, scrubbing and polishing it over and over, rereading and rewriting, seeing if I could make it more interesting. If I’m being honest, it might even be in the process of trial and error.
Interviewer: This is your first detective scenario, isn’t it?
Hino: I think the reason why the Professor Layton series is so popular is that it tickles the intellectual curiosity of adults. The starting point for this project was that if we could combine Level-5’s expertise in creating RPGs with the image of a narrative mystery, we thought it would be interesting.
Interviewer: Well, it is a detective RPG that tickles our curiosity, like the Professor Layton series, but it also sounds very interesting because it seems so unique.
Hino: The truth is, at first, we were going to use something like “from the staff that brought you Professor Layton,” or “The successor to the Layton series is here!” or something like that as an advertising point.
Via
