Order of the Sinking Star
Genres: Puzzle, Sci-Fi, Story Rich, Adventure
Release Date: 8-10-2026
Developer: Thekla, Inc.
Our verdict
9.5/10
- Difficulty: Hard
- Players: 1
- Playtime: 50+ h
Order of the Sinking Star is a huge puzzle adventure from Jonathan Blow, director of Braid and The Witness. In a top-down realm you push blocks and combine mechanics across more than a thousand hand-crafted puzzles, each built so that every element matters. It suits solo players who want a long, demanding puzzle game and liked The Witness.
Steam reviews are overwhelmingly positive (about 96% of 1,862). Players describe the familiar experience of finding a clever solution only to realise the designers have removed the piece you needed. They praise how puzzles chain together, the calm music and the sheer scale; one compares it to Elden Ring for puzzle games, and even people who disliked sokoban games say it made the genre fun.
It is demanding and enormous: reviewers report 50 to over 100 hours, and some needed to sleep on a puzzle to crack it. One player asks for colourblind support after struggling with overlapping coloured beams, and menus are barebones. For serious puzzle fans it is a must-buy; casual players should start with the demo.
Pros
- More than a thousand tightly designed block-pushing puzzles
- Mechanics chain together in surprising ways
- Huge length with calm music for long sessions
Cons
- No colourblind support for coloured beam puzzles
- Very demanding, not for casual players
- Barebones menus
About
From legendary director Jonathan Blow (Braid, The Witness) comes Order of the Sinking Star, a massive puzzle adventure featuring more than one thousand hand-crafted puzzles designed to put your intellect to the test. You are transported to a realm of curious magic, dangerous contraptions, and vicious monsters. Explore four distinct worlds, each with its own mechanics, characters, and stories, and then watch as they all collide. As the worlds merge, and characters meet one another, puzzle systems intertwine, creating surprising new gameplay possibilities. Explore at your own pace, revisit worlds and return to challenges as you see fit. Discover unique playable characters, master evolving gameplay mechanics, and decipher the deep mysteries of a sprawling, interconnected game world. Blending exploration, storytelling, and ever-progressing mechanics, Order of the Sinking Star invites you into a mysterious, living puzzle unlike anything you've played.
Embark on an innovative puzzle adventure with dozens of game mechanics and hundreds of hours of unique gameplay. Each puzzle builds on the last, introducing new game mechanics that reward curiosity and persistence.
Explore four mysterious worlds, each with its own characters, rules, dangers, and secrets waiting to be uncovered. Come and go as you like, you are free to take on the puzzles you discover at your own pace.
A queen, a thief, a warrior, a wizard, and a talking boat are just some of the heroes of this tale. Each character wields complementary abilities and has captivating stories to tell.
As playable characters begin to meet and worlds collide, the mystery untangles. Through gameplay and notes you collect you learn more about this enigmatic realm. Piece by piece and clue by clue, you’ll uncover the secrets of the Order of the Sinking Star.
History, Foundation & Design Contributions
Order of the Sinking Star has been in the making for nearly a decade since the release of The Witness, born from a desire to push puzzle game design past its traditional limits to create the largest and greatest puzzle game ever made. With Order of the Sinking Star, the development team created a "game design supercollider" – smashing together the ideas from multiple puzzle game designers to create a puzzle landscape that's much more intricate and vast than what has come before.
The foundation of Order of the Sinking Star is built upon these four brilliant titles:
Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes by Alan Hazelden: A serene puzzle game about throwing stones into water to create stepping paths.
Mirror Isles by Alan Hazelden: A clever top-down game focused on swapping places with reflections across islands.
Promesst 1-3 by Sean Barrett: An abstract grid-puzzler about exploring a cave filled with mysterious beams of light.
Heroes of Sokoban (1, 2, & 3) by Jonah Ostroff: A fantasy-themed puzzle game where you manage distinct hero classes (like warriors and mages) with unique movement and pushing mechanics to reach the exit.
While these games inspire and comprise the very beginning of Order of the Sinking Star and lay the foundation of its gameplay, the game as a whole explores the endless, unexpected possibilities of merging these worlds together.
The game also showcases design contributions from Zach Polansky (Enigmash), Patrick Traynor (Patrick's Parabox), Marc ten Bosch (Miegakure), and several others – including design contributions from Twitch followers over the years.
The Thekla, Inc. team is incredibly thankful for all the support they’ve had for the game over the course of development!
