Order of the Sinking Star is the third game directed by Jonathan Blow, the designer behind Braid and The Witness, made by his studio Thekla, Inc. and published by Arc Games and Gamirror Games. It’s been in development for nearly a decade, built in Jai, the programming language Thekla created alongside it, and it launched on October 8, 2026 on PC, PS5 and Nintendo Switch 2.
It’s a massive puzzle adventure: more than 1,000 hand-crafted, interconnected puzzles across a realm of magic, dangerous contraptions and monsters, with a cast of playable heroes that includes a queen, a thief, a warrior, a wizard and a talking boat. Our verdict: Jonathan Blow delivers a masterclass in puzzle design with over 1000 intricately woven challenges that will captivate patient players.
Built From Four Great Puzzle Games
Throwing stones into water to create stepping paths.
Swapping places with reflections across islands.
Exploring a cave full of mysterious beams of light.
Managing hero classes with their own movement and pushing rules.
Those four games are only where it starts. Each world opens up on its own terms, and then the real game begins as they bleed into each other. A hero from one world turns up in another and brings their abilities along, so you have to rethink everything you thought you knew about a mechanic.
A Game That Trusts You
There’s no tutorial. There are no pop-ups every time a new mechanic appears. The game simply puts you in a small, simple puzzle, lets you work out the rule, and then builds on it at a carefully judged pace. Players love it, and one called the way it teaches a 10/10 from a game design perspective.
The most impressive thing is how fresh it stays. After around 35 hours and 330 puzzles, one player said almost every puzzle still felt new: even when it looked like an old trick would work, a small change forced a completely different solution. Others describe being floored less by the difficulty than by how clever the intended solutions are, and wondering how the designers even came up with them.
More Than Pushing Boxes
The “Sokoban” tag scares people off, and it shouldn’t. Players who describe themselves as lifelong Sokoban haters keep calling this one of their favourite puzzle games ever. That’s because the real challenge isn’t pushing blocks around. It’s working out how to combine your heroes’ abilities, whoever’s available in a given puzzle, to get past whatever the designers have set up.
It’s also enormous. Blow has said there are more than 1,400 puzzles in total, and he’s estimated up to 250 hours to reach the end at a normal pace and over 500 hours to solve everything. You don’t need to solve every puzzle to finish the story. One player six hours in says they’ve barely scratched the surface, and even after the section called “The End Game,” there’s more to find.
⚠️ Mild late-game spoiler: what’s after “The End Game” (click to reveal)
A Story Told Through Puzzles
Order of the Sinking Star is a puzzle game first, but it has a story too, or rather several. Each world’s characters have their own tales, told through excellent voice acting and notes you collect, and those threads run in parallel before coming together as the worlds merge. Players say solving puzzles to push the story forward is its own reward, and that the mystery keeps them wanting to see how it all fits together.
Runs Like a Dream
Technically, this is one of the most polished releases of the year. Players praise quick startups that go straight into the game, and one reports holding 120 FPS almost everywhere on a high-end PC, with a single particle-heavy level dropping to 60. It also runs well on modest hardware (“potato PCs,” as one put it), is Steam Deck Verified, and has full controller support. Building its own language and engine seems to have paid off.
Things to Know Going In
The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
| The Good | The Bad | The Ugly |
|---|---|---|
| World-Class Puzzle Design1,000+ hand-crafted puzzles that keep reinventing themselves and almost never repeat a trick. | Punishingly Hard Later OnReal brain-burners that will leave you stuck for hours, or days. | Tiny Visual NitsA repeating voice line, a lighting seam and the odd stray particle. Barely worth mentioning. |
| It Trusts the PlayerNo tutorial, no pop-ups, just a perfectly paced learning curve. | Easy to Lose the ThreadThe huge nonlinear world can make finding new puzzles tricky. | — |
| Four Worlds That CollideA brilliant “supercollider” of four great indie puzzlers, with heroes whose abilities combine in surprising ways. | Still a Grid PuzzlerIf top-down grid puzzles don’t click for you, this won’t convert you. | — |
| Superb PerformanceQuick loads, high frame rates, great on modest PCs and Steam Deck Verified. | — | — |
| Atmosphere and Voice ActingCharming visuals, lovely music and excellent performances across several parallel stories. | — | — |
The Verdict
Order of the Sinking Star is the kind of game that only comes along every few years. It takes four great puzzle games, merges them into one enormous, interconnected world, and keeps finding new ideas for hundreds of puzzles without ever feeling padded. It respects your intelligence from the first screen, gives you the tools to never feel truly trapped, and runs beautifully on just about anything.
It isn’t for everyone. It’s hard, it’s huge, and it asks for patience. But if you’ve ever loved The Witness, Baba Is You or Patrick’s Parabox, or if you’ve ever felt that rush when an impossible puzzle suddenly clicks, this is essential.
The honest read: a masterclass in puzzle design, and one of the best puzzle games ever made. At $29.99 for potentially hundreds of hours, it’s also a bargain.
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