Order of the Sinking Star Review - A Puzzle Game That Rewrites the Rules
Order of The Sinking Star
Steam/PC/Switch 2
8/11/26
Thekla, Inc./Arc Games/Gamirror Games
Puzzle games have a fine line to walk: too easy, and you risk disappointing those puzzlers who do those murder mystery books for funsies, but make them too hard, and your audience may drop into a deep puzzle-fueled bout of self-doubt and never touch a sudoku ever again. But did Order of the Sinking Star find itself at the intersection of fun and challenging, or did it gloss straight over my smooth brain and into the bin?
Luckily, despite the lack of folds in my cranium, I think this particular puzzle game is quite a winner. It’s fun, has lots of great variety, and looks beautiful, so that even when you are stuck and frustrated that you can’t solve a puzzle immediately, you’re at least greeted with a feast for the eyes. Now, full transparency: I haven’t finished all 1000 puzzles in Order of the Sinking Star. If I had managed to do so in a week, I’d have probably received an invitation to join MENSA or ended up on some CIA watchlist for being too big-brained, because a few of these puzzles are hard as nails and took me a hot minute to figure out.
But the team at Thekla have thought about those moments where your brain can’t seem to piece a solution together, and in order to keep you playing when you need to get away from goblins that keep ruining your plans, you can hop into a variety of other puzzles available to you at any time.
The worlds in Sinking Stars are actually made up of four other games, most of which are browser games or short-form Windows puzzlers from the last decade or so, and all of which have been adapted into longer, interconnected sections that all challenge you in their own way. The game recommends tackling two sections first to help ease you into things, both of which are more modular and have smaller sets of ever more difficult puzzles to solve, whereas the other two are a bit more open-ended and often require you to work on one area for a significant length of time.
The first area is based on Heroes of Sokoban by Jonah Ostroff and features a trio of fantasy heroes, all with their own helpful (or sometimes hindering) abilities that are on an adventure to escape prison and hunt down the evil judge that put them there. Your main puzzles come in the form of moving crystals, monsters, and each other around small areas to get to the finish and progress further. Our rogue can (and will, whether you want her to or not) drag anything she encounters in one direction of the grid, our wizard swaps places with anything on the same plane as him, and our soldier can push groups of objects around with brute strength. Sometimes our heroes will be alone, and sometimes they’ll meet up, requiring you to use their abilities in tandem, which can occasionally prove tricky. As you progress, you’ll meet other heroes and more challenging scenarios.
The other starter area is built upon Mirror Isles by Alan Hazelden and requires you to move mirrors into the correct place so that our hero can swap places with his reflection. Gradually, you’ll be tasked with using more mirrors to create clones that will help you with your missions, though spawn a few too many men and you’ll not be able to finish, no matter if that is your kind of thing or not! Move crystals and other objects to get to your goal, or just get frustrated and send your buddy zipping back and forth for a bit to get out the pent-up anger at not being able to solve it.
Things get a little trickier in the section inspired by Promesst 1-3 by Sean Barrett, where beams of light give our miner special powers and he must gradually unlock access to more and more crystals that will gain you access to deeper and deeper in the mine. Some beams teleport you, some give you super strength, and some let you walk through walls, but it is up to you to negotiate the looping grid to figure out the best path forward. This actually was my favorite ‘world’ and scratched my brain in just the right way that when I finally figured out I was being a big ol' dumb dumb, I didn’t mind too much because the solution was satisfying enough to counteract my annoyance, which actually goes for most of the other puzzles too, even the ones I had to outsource to my puzzley friend to help solve.
The final world is Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes by Alan Hazelden inspired, with a winding path that must be negotiated with lilypads and skipping stones that will move over bodies of water in order to help you adventure through this archipelago. This one was possibly the weakest set of puzzles, at least for me, with the way it was structured I sometimes wasn’t sure if stones should be brought from one area into the next or if I was supposed to solve it without using them. It wasn’t a major issue, and perhaps (if I were smarter) I would’ve enjoyed it more, but this one just didn’t gel with me. It also had the weakest voice acting out of the whole lot, with a sentient ship and its captain discussing mysterious guild secrets and the origins of this set of islands in what can best be described as incredibly stilted dialogue and even more wonky delivery. Not that the voice acting is what we’re coming to Order of the Sinking Star for, but when compared to the rest of the pretty good delivery and dialogue, it did stand out.
The best thing about the format of the game is the fact each area can be accessed whenever you like. Get stuck on a tricky puzzle in the mirror world? Don’t even worry about it, just hop back to the mines to grab those crystals you’d left behind. Plus, with the way the game saves, you’ll pick up each puzzle exactly where you left off, so if you need to get away for a minute and come back with fresh eyes, you won’t lose any progress. This was such a refreshing way of dealing with puzzle fatigue, with each world’s mechanic so vastly different, especially in the early game, it’s easy to find something else to do to cleanse your palate a bit!
The story of Order of the Sinking Stars is a bit all over the place, but that is kind of the point. When in the overworld, you’re playing as a fantasy Queen who has awoken in some kind of ancient building that seemed to once house a civilization. You’ll encounter voice recordings from other individuals who found themselves stuck in this strange land and are endeavoring to uncover its secrets. Eventually, the story across all four worlds and the overworld begins to merge, with puzzle mechanics, characters, and even story beats crashing into one another, which sort of feels like when my best friend, who also has ADHD, and I attempt to tell stories to each other at the same time.
I’ve already briefly mentioned the voice acting, but I do feel (apart from the one world) it is in general very well done. Each character has a distinct tone and feel to their voice, which sets them apart from the rest, and even with the top-down POV, their character designs are often complemented by the performances. The music is subtle and atmospheric enough that even when you’re staring at a puzzle for a significant period of time, you’re not getting bombarded with the same piece of music over and over just to really rub it in. The sound effects are also lovely, with my personal favorite noise being the little thumping of the rewind function. Not sure what it was about it in particular, but boy did it make my brain happy.
The game is colorful, vibrant, and each ‘world’ stands out from the rest not only with the look and feel of the puzzles but with the distinct color palettes and landscaping that make each one seem like a whole new game. Though there are motifs and an overall art style that mean they all still feel connected despite their differences.
Order of the Sinking Stars might be tricky for more casual puzzle fans. There are no hints, no difficulty sliders, just gradual difficulty increases and mechanical changes that set you new challenges, very much like The Witness in the way you’ll find yourself scratching your head more the longer your playthrough goes on. But if you are looking to ‘Git Gud’ and give your one brain cell a bit of a workout, then I would recommend picking this one up and setting aside a vast chunk of time so that when you eventually check off that last puzzle, your brain will be so big you’ll be walking around like Megamind.
I feel like I have barely scratched the surface of what Order of the Sinking Star has to offer. Over 1,000 puzzles is crazy work, and I think if I just played this game for the next 6 months, I still wouldn’t have finished it. But if the ones I did manage to play through are anything to go by, boy, would those 6 months be a treat and a mental workout! There was a lot to live up to for Jonathan Blow; his previous ventures are puzzle game royalty, and I think, with what the team has done here, this one will be the same. It’s creative, diverse, and literally full to bursting with puzzles. What more could you possibly want? And given my only gripe with the game is a little bit of ropey voice acting, I think it would be unfair of me to award the tricky Order of the Sinking Star anything other than a Golden Genie Lamp of Approval.
ESSENTIAL
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