Professor Layton and the Unwound Future
Like the previous Professor Layton games, Unwound Future is an adventure game in which the player solves puzzles offered by citizens to advance the story. The player moves through still images of locations in the game. Using the DS touchscreen, the player can tap non-player characters to start a dialogue or solve a puzzle. He can also search for clue coins anywhere on the background, with some areas requiring multiple taps to reveal a secret clue coin or puzzle. The puzzles consist of many different types of puzzles, including visual, mathematical, and logical. There is no time limit for solving puzzles and the player can obtain up to 3 clues, each of which costs a clue coin. New in Unwound Future is a "super clue" that costs 2 coins and can only be purchased after the other 3 clues have been revealed, but it almost gives away the solution to the puzzle. If the player solves the puzzle correctly, he/she will receive a number of "Picarats", a kind of in-game currency. If you guess the wrong answer, the number of picarats you can receive on further attempts decreases. Players can visit certain areas to play undiscovered or unsolved puzzles that are left behind throughout the story.
Story
When Layton and Luke are invited to a demonstration of a time machine built by Dr. Alain Stahngun, the experiment goes awry and Stahngun and Prime Minister Bill Hawks disappear. A week later, when numerous scientists are reported missing, Layton and Luke receive a letter purporting to be from Luke ten years in the future, leading them to a quaint clock store in the back streets of London. There, the old couple shows them another time machine in the form of a giant clock and they find themselves in a drastically altered quasi-steam punk London ten years removed from their present, where they meet the future Luke. He explains to them that in this future Layton has become the head of a mafia-like gang called "The Family" and has taken control of London, and they decide to help him. After briefly returning to the past to consult some files on an accident that killed his girlfriend Claire ten years ago, Layton and Luke return to future London and accidentally take Flora, Inspector Chelmey and his assistant Barton with them. As the group searches for the whereabouts of future-Layton, Luke is reminded that he will soon be moving in with his parents.