The Order of the Sinking Star Review

The Order of the Sinking Star blends four distinct puzzle worlds into one sprawling adventure, delivering clever mechanics, satisfying discoveries, and plenty of frustration.

The Order of the Sinking Star comes from Jonathan Blow and Thekla Inc., the team behind Braid and The Witness, and it has reportedly been in the making for a decade. That history gives The Order of the Sinking Star a lot to live up to because Braid and The Witness both left a noticeable mark on the puzzle genre.

Instead of building another straightforward puzzle collection, though, Blow's latest project takes four existing puzzle concepts from other creators and brings them together inside one large world. Each idea becomes its own region, with different characters, rules, environments, and ways of thinking.

That approach immediately gives The Order of the Sinking Star an unusual identity.

You aren't simply playing one type of Sokoban puzzle for dozens of hours and watching the rules slowly get more complicated. You constantly learn a different system, get comfortable with it, and eventually see it collide with something you learned elsewhere. That keeps each new area feeling different while still connecting to the larger adventure.

The game is built around learning, forgetting, experimenting, making mistakes, and suddenly realizing that something you discovered hours earlier is exactly what you need now. That constant back-and-forth is what keeps the huge collection of puzzles from feeling like a simple checklist of challenges.

The scale is also one of the first things that stands out. The Order of the Sinking Star features more than 1,000 puzzles spread across a large overworld, with separate puzzle areas branching off it. The structure takes some inspiration from the original The Legend of Zelda, where exploration and individual challenges feed into each other. It is an ambitious setup, and that ambition is both one of the game's biggest strengths and one of its biggest weaknesses. 

You begin in a strange, artificial, garden-like facility after being pulled away from what appears to have been some kind of battle. Your character initially has no idea where she is or whether she has even survived. As you start exploring, you find recordings left behind by someone who came through the mysterious place before you. 

Eventually, you reach the large overworld and discover four different regions extending in various directions. Each region represents a separate world with its characters and puzzle rules. This strange setup conveniently explains why The Order of the Sinking Star can jump from traditional block pushing to teleportation, water-based puzzles, strange beams, and other mechanics without feeling like each one belongs to an entirely different game. 

The individual stories provide these worlds some personality.

In the northern region, the fantasy characters are dealing with a magister and the strange crystal museum surrounding them. The eastern story follows a traitorous character tied to a series of mirror-based trials, while the western explorer becomes interested in gems and the ancient civilization that seemingly created the technology around them.

The queen herself ends up walking the overworld and connecting these disparate threads. Audio recordings also raise bigger questions about who built this place and what it’s really for. These details provide the world a sense of mystery beyond the puzzles themselves.

The story shines when it gives you another reason to care about the characters as you work on their puzzles. The character banter from the people from the north is enough to lighten their situation, while the stories of the explorer and the traitor get slower treatment. At the same time, the bigger mystery isn't always as satisfying as the puzzles.

Story information is spread out in small chunks, and some character motivations feel more like justification for adding another mechanic than a fully realized reason to keep exploring. By the time you reach a major ending, plenty of questions remain unanswered, so the main reason to continue becomes the promise of another clever puzzle rather than the narrative alone.

The basic structure is deceptively simple. You explore the overworld as the queen, reach different nodes, enter puzzle areas, solve what is in front of you, and use your progress to open new paths. From above, The Order of the Sinking Star feels like a large, puzzle-focused adventure rather than a sequence of completely disconnected levels. 

Most of the actual puzzle movement is built around a grid and the familiar idea of pushing objects into useful positions.

That foundation remains recognizable even as The Order of the Sinking Star adds more complicated rules. The key difference is that you usually deal with multiple characters who behave unpredictably. Different characters have different abilities, and understanding what each can and cannot do is part of the challenge.

The northern Heroes of Hauling area is the most recognizable starting point. You control fantasy characters such as a warrior, mage, and thief, with each one changing the basic rules of block pushing. What starts as a familiar Sokoban setup quickly becomes more engaging as their abilities create different ways to approach each puzzle.

The warrior can push multiple blocks at once instead of just one; the mage can swap positions with characters or objects directly in front of him, and the thief cannot push objects forward but can pull them behind her. Other characters add restrictions and abilities, forcing you to rethink movement instead of simply repeating the same Sokoban solution.

The eastern Mirror Isles region takes the idea in another direction. Mirrors can teleport objects at right angles, allowing you to create routes that would otherwise be impossible. Once rocks and other objects become part of the puzzles, the system becomes much harder to predict. 

Mirrors can also produce copies of your character, meaning you can end up controlling several versions at once. You then have to figure out how those copies can interact with buttons, exits, and other objects without leaving one in the wrong position. As the puzzles get harder, tracking each copy becomes part of the planning.

The western region revolves around special beams that grant different powers.

Depending on the beam, you can walk through walls, teleport, destroy boulders, push objects, or interact with the environment in other ways. The beam system becomes especially engaging when you start moving the devices and discover how different beams affect one another.

The southern Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes region changes the formula again, using stones, water, splashes, wind, floating leaves, currents, and pathways to create puzzles that operate more like carefully arranged chains of events. Each action affects what happens next, so you must consider the order in which you set everything in motion.

The strongest part of the overall design is how these systems eventually stop existing separately. The Order of the Sinking Star starts by teaching you individual mechanics, but later challenges expect you to remember what you learned across several regions at once. A solution might require a pushing character, a skipping stone, a pulling ability, and a teleportation mechanic you haven't used in hours. 

The Order of the Sinking Star also offers a satisfying sense of discovery because it rarely tells you exactly what to do. When you fail, you are generally left to work out the problem yourself. That can be frustrating, but it also makes successful solutions feel like your discoveries rather than answers you were guided toward. 

The Order of the Sinking Star has no traditional combat system because puzzles are the main form of interaction and challenge. The entire game revolves around understanding how objects, characters, powers, and environments interact. Most puzzles are presented from a top-down perspective, and your job is to figure out where everything needs to go and the order in which you need to act.

The individual puzzle design is often excellent.

The Order of the Sinking Star often introduces an idea, teaches you how it works, and then asks you to apply it in a less obvious situation. That creates a lot of genuine "aha" moments. One particularly effective type of challenge combines teleporting beams with the Mirror Isles mechanics, where mirrors can create multiple copies of your character.

You can end up controlling four versions at once, yet only one character can ultimately reach the exit. Solving that kind of puzzle requires understanding how the systems relate, not just memorizing one solution. Every move has to account for what the other versions are doing at the same time.

The problem is that the same complexity that produces those remarkable moments can eventually work against you. Some puzzles become difficult because you have too many rules to remember at once. You might understand what the puzzle is asking but forget an interaction you learned several hours earlier.

One especially frustrating situation involves combining a pushing character, skipping stones, and a pulling character. You understood the solution relatively quickly, but the second step remained confusing because you had forgotten an older rule about the stones. That kind of difficulty doesn't always feel like learning something new; sometimes it feels like searching through a large mental rulebook.

The four worlds also feel unequally enjoyable. Skipping stones to lonely homes can be particularly awkward because it involves skipping stones across water, creating splashes, using wind, moving across floating leaves, and manipulating currents. The puzzles are not necessarily harder than those in the other regions, but the system can feel less intuitive.

The gem-based world is much more interesting mechanically, especially because it uses a large grid of interconnected screens where beams can travel across multiple areas and interact in unexpected ways. However, that same structure introduces a serious problem when you accidentally put yourself into a position where the necessary beams are no longer accessible.

The game's undo and restart systems help soften many of these problems.

You can undo individual actions almost instantly, with each movement counting as an action, so accidentally pushing an important object into a bad position is rarely a disaster. You can also restart a puzzle immediately and adjust time speed when a challenge involves timing. These systems encourage experimentation because you can try an idea, see it fail, and rewind without starting over completely. 

There is no traditional XP grinding or character-leveling system to distract you from the actual puzzle design. Progression comes from learning mechanics, completing puzzles, opening paths, discovering new regions, and eventually understanding how the different worlds connect. That works well because your real reward is knowledge. 

That progression also explains why the game's enormous puzzle count can be both exciting and tiring. One new discovery can suddenly make an area that seemed impossible feel manageable, while another puzzle can leave you staring at the screen because you forgot one tiny rule from hours earlier. 

The environments generally look good, and the different worlds have enough visual identity to make their mechanics feel distinct. The water in particular is one of the stronger visuals, and the wider environments provide the large overworld a fantasy-like feel. Character presentation is less consistent. 

The overworld is also a mixed success visually and mechanically. It gives you a large space to move around and connects all the puzzle regions, but it doesn't always deliver the same sense of discovery as the best puzzle-game overworlds. Moving a rock or completing another puzzle often opens new pathways, which gets the job done but can feel routine after a while. 

The audio design is one of the presentation's more consistently successful parts.

The music has a calm fantasy quality that fits the slower pace of puzzle-solving, and one particularly lovely touch is how it fades when you stop moving and spend time thinking. Instead of filling every second with music, The Order of the Sinking Star lets environmental sounds take over. You can hear waves, forest ambiance, woodland creatures, and the simple sound of objects moving across the puzzle grid. 

The Order of the Sinking Star is an unusually ambitious puzzle game, and its biggest strength comes from how much it manages to do with a simple block-pushing foundation. By combining four different puzzle concepts into one world, The Order of the Sinking Star offers enormous variety. You can spend time learning one system, move somewhere else and learn another, then eventually discover that both systems were preparing you for a much larger puzzle that requires you to remember everything.

That design produces some genuinely satisfying moments. The best puzzles make you stop, experiment, rethink an assumption, and eventually understand something that was sitting in front of you the entire time. The instant undo, restart, and time controls make that experimentation easier, while the lack of constant hints lets you feel responsible for the solutions you discover. 

At the same time, the sheer scale can become exhausting. More than 1,000 puzzles is impressive, but not every one is needed for the game to work. At times, the pacing drags, and some challenges feel difficult because you have to remember too many rules, not because The Order of the Sinking Star has taught you a new way to think.

The overworld can also feel bland compared with the more interactive puzzle spaces, and the narrative doesn't always provide enough motivation to make the enormous journey feel meaningful on its own. As a result, the puzzles often become the main reason to keep moving forward.

The story is probably the biggest area where the game doesn't match the strength of its puzzle design.

The characters have personalities and individual goals, but the game often delivers their stories in small fragments that feel secondary to the mechanics. The larger mystery surrounding the world, the queen, and whoever built the strange facility is intriguing, but the answers are spread out enough that the puzzles remain the real reason to keep going.

The game also has an intriguing tension around its originality. The Order of the Sinking Star is clearly doing a lot with the puzzle ideas it borrows from its four source games, and the way those systems eventually collide is impressive. At the same time, the broader puzzle genre has changed during the long development period, and other games have already explored sophisticated Sokoban mechanics in creative ways. 

Still, that does not make the puzzles unworthy. Quite the opposite. The core gameplay is smooth, the mechanics are thoughtfully designed, and there are enough clever interactions to keep you coming back after a frustrating puzzle. Even when the game overwhelms you, another engaging idea is usually waiting somewhere else.