I was initially intrigued by Order of the Sinking Star primarily because of Johnathan Blow’s involvement. Back in 2008, Blow was seen as a rock star of the Indie space, but for someone who enjoyed such a high pedigree, he hasn’t actually made a ton of games. That’s not to say he hasn’t made good games—quite the contrary—but he always seems to stay out of the scene long enough you almost forget about him.
But Order of the Sinking Star seemed like an incredibly interesting prospect. A kind of large-scale puzzle adventure where players utilize unique characters set across multiple stories? It could work. Thankfully, CGM was given an opportunity to take a look at an early demo build to see the game in action and I’ve got to say, it’s certainly ambitious.
Unlike Braid which had its share of puzzles, but kept them grounded in simple 2D design; or even The Witness that gave players a wide collection of puzzles, but in a fairly centralized area, Order of the Sinking Star is aiming for what feels like a massive, sprawling world of puzzles, separated not only by an overworld map, but by layers—both literally and figuratively—within levels themselves.
“While the demo build was fairly early on and the game is still a bit rough around the edges, there’s a lot of promise in Order of the Sinking Star.“
These levels can range from the simplistic, to deeply complex, both in their physical design and breadth of puzzles. Players control each character from a semi-overhead view, essentially moving along a grid. It allows Order of the Sinking Star to focus its puzzles on movement and complex placement of objects which is both simple to understand, but can get increasingly more challenging.
It creates a lot of unique scenarios for considering movement and placement. One level placed my character on an collection of islands where a magic mirror allowed them to reflect their position based on their distance from the mirror. By moving the mirrors, I could project myself onto further islands, in order to keep progressing forward. This got more complicated as boulders began getting placed around islands, causing me to have to be more considerate about where to push mirrors, and the lengths I could stretch my projected reflection.
Another level put me in the shoes of a trio of characters, each who could push crystals around each room in unique ways. One could push the crystals—stacking them together as he moved—one could only pull crystals behind her, requiring them to be led; and another could only teleport the space a crystal was in—leaving it in the place he was standing—while facing it directly. Each challenge required some careful maneuvering and clever observation while offering a lot of diversity of challenge.
“Order of the Sinking Star does have a pretty intriguing bit of storytelling running underneath it. “
The final level was the most complex, requiring me to find a collection of crystals and place them on specific pedestals in order to power mechanisms that fired coloured beams. Each colour correspond to a different unique ability—green allowed me to walk through walls, blue allowed me to push boulders, yellow could let me destroy rocks or robots, and more. The unique gimmick of this level was the…let’s say “pocket universe” it was contained in looped, so with careful positioning and slow progress, beams could extend across the whole level, providing new ways forward.
It was a surprising amount of diversity in a puzzle game that genuinely tied its themes and aesthetic together in a cohesive way. In a lot of ways it reminded me of the kinds of games you’d get in UFO 50—unique ideas so well executed they could have an entire game built around them. It genuinely made me curious about what new mechanic lay waiting in the next area and what unique puzzles would be built around it.
And Order of the Sinking Star does have a pretty intriguing bit of storytelling running underneath it. Each area tells a contained story about the characters players are inhabiting, while also providing a lot of underlying lore to this world and what’s going on. Audio logs provide some added context to each little pocket dungeon as well, and it only further builds the mystery of what is going on in this game.
While the demo build was fairly early on and the game is still a bit rough around the edges, there’s a lot of promise in Order of the Sinking Star. It’s a solid example of Johnathan Blow’s puzzle-crafting chops and an excellent return to games for him. Perhaps its good he dips in and out of the spotlight—if this is what he’s crafting in the shadows, then I’m all for it!
Order of the Sinking Star will be available in 2026 for PC and Nintendo Switch 2.
