Game: Order of the Sinking Star
Developer: Thekla, Inc.
Publisher: Arc Games
Design Lead: Jonathan Blow (Braid, The Witness)
Genre: Puzzle Adventure
Release Date: October 8, 2026
Platforms: PC · Steam Deck · Switch 2 · PS5
Demo: Available now — progress carries over
⭐ Order of the Sinking Star launches October 8 on PC, Nintendo Switch 2 and PlayStation 5. Ten years in the making since The Witness, Jonathan Blow and Thekla’s puzzle adventure promises over a thousand handcrafted puzzles across four interconnected worlds.
🎮 The Demo Is Out Now — and Your Progress Carries Over
This is the detail worth acting on. The Steam demo is playable today, and any progress you make in it transfers directly into the full game at launch.
That removes the usual reason to hold off — you’re not spending time you’ll have to spend again. It was also one of the most-played demos of Steam Next Fest, so there’s a decent chance you’ve already got a head start sitting in your library.
A queen, a thief, a warrior, a wizard, and a talking boat. Their worlds are about to collide.
Order of the Sinking Star has a release date: October 8, on PC via Steam and Steam Deck, Nintendo Switch 2, and PlayStation 5. It’s the first game from Jonathan Blow and Thekla since The Witness in 2016, and it is not a small one.
More than a thousand handcrafted puzzles. Four expansive worlds, each with its own characters, rules and dangers. Hundreds of hours of gameplay. An open, non-linear structure that lets you wander off whenever a puzzle stops being fun and come back when it starts again.
The Guest Designer List Is Extraordinary
🧠 A “Game Design Supercollider”
Blow’s own phrase, and the most interesting thing in the whole announcement. Order of the Sinking Star isn’t just a Thekla project — it carries design contributions from a genuinely remarkable list of independent puzzle designers, several of whom are responsible for some of the most respected puzzle games of the last decade.
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Alan Hazelden
Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes, Mirror Isles
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Patrick Traynor
Patrick’s Parabox
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Marc ten Bosch
Miegakure
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Sean Barrett
Promesst
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Jonah Ostroff
Heroes of Sokoban
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Zach Polansky
Enigmash
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…and several others
including contributions from Twitch followers over the years
That’s a serious roster. Patrick’s Parabox and Miegakure in particular are the sort of games that get cited when people argue about what puzzle design is even capable of — recursive boxes and four-dimensional space respectively. Having those minds contributing to a single project is arguably the story here, more than the puzzle count is.
By creating a kind of game design supercollider, we were able to bring together ideas from some of the most brilliant puzzle designers in the industry. I’m grateful to everyone who contributed to help us push the limits of what’s possible in a puzzle adventure.
— Jonathan Blow, Founder, Thekla, Inc.
The detail about Twitch followers contributing designs over the years is a nice one too. Blow has developed much of his work publicly on stream, and folding community submissions into a commercial release is an unusual and rather generous way to close that loop.
Built Around the Way People Actually Quit Puzzle Games
🗺️ Get Stuck, Go Somewhere Else
The structure is doing something deliberate. Puzzle games have one dominant failure state: you hit a wall, you bounce off it repeatedly, you stop playing and never return.
Order of the Sinking Star’s non-linear, open design answers that directly — hitting a roadblock in one realm simply means pivoting to another world and coming back whenever you’re ready. Thekla describe it as being designed to respect players’ boundless curiosity, and to deliver a “just one more puzzle” loop.
That’s a structural response to a real problem rather than a marketing line. With four worlds and a thousand-plus puzzles, there’s always somewhere else to be — which means a hard puzzle becomes something you set down rather than something that ends your relationship with the game.
🧩 Interwoven Challenges
Dozens of mechanics, with each puzzle building on the last and introducing new ideas that reward curiosity and persistence.
🌍 Four Worlds
Each expansive realm has its own characters, rules, dangers and secrets — explored entirely at your own pace.
👑 Unlikely Heroes
A queen, a thief, a warrior, a wizard and a talking boat, each with complementary abilities and their own story to tell.
📜 An Epic Tale
Piece together an enigmatic mythos through exploration, cryptic notes and professional voice-over narration from a full cast.
The collision premise is the connective tissue. What begins as separate journeys evolves into a shared universe where mechanics, characters and abilities meet — and, in Thekla’s words, the rules of reality shift to create new possibilities. For a puzzle game, that’s a promising way to keep escalating complexity without simply making individual puzzles harder.
The platform spread is worth noting on its own. A day-one Switch 2 release alongside PC and PS5 is a strong showing for a game of this scale, and explicit Steam Deck support suits a puzzle game you’ll want to pick up and put down constantly.
🧩 Puzzle
🗺️ Adventure
🔀 Non-Linear
📖 Story Rich
🎙️ Voice Acted
🎯 Single-Player
Who’s Making It
✨ Thekla, Inc.
Founded by Jonathan Blow, the designer behind Braid and The Witness — two games that did a great deal to establish what an independent puzzle game could be. Order of the Sinking Star has been in development for roughly a decade.
🏢 Arc Games
An independent publisher of AA and indie titles across North America, Europe and Asia, whose catalogue includes REMNANT II, the Torchlight series, Frosthaven and Have a Nice Death. They’re also publishing NAUTUS, the co-op submarine adventure heading to Early Access in 2027.
Order of the Sinking Star launches October 8 on PC, Nintendo Switch 2 and PlayStation 5. The demo is available now, and your progress will be waiting for you.
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