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I’ve been staring at one puzzle in Order of the Sinking Star for a good 20 minutes when it clicks. What I need to do is obvious – my three heroes all have to cross a gap to stand on the far side together. Getting two of them over took me almost no time, but the third leaves me stumped, poking and prodding all manner of possibilities. It just feels as though I need to come in the other… I curse and laugh. “I have to go from the other side.” My coffee is cold, yet in my moment of victory it tastes just as delicious as ever. Jonathan Blow is back, and his latest offering is a typically cozy, understated web of mastercrafted puzzles.
It’s been a decade since The Witness, Blow’s last release, and I still hold it up as one of the gold standards of puzzle games. It feels almost effortlessly slick, in a way that can only come from an immense amount of care and attention in the craft. Order of the Sinking Star retains that trend from minute one. Barring an early introduction to the controls, it’s almost entirely tutorial free, at least in the traditional sense. Instead, each puzzle is a stepping stone, teaching you just a little something new, and gently nudging you along the path towards the knowledge you require for what lies ahead.
Blow describes Order of the Sinking Star as a “game design supercollider,” smashing together the concepts of four freeware puzzlers (with the permission of their creators). We start with Jonah Ostroff’s Heroes of Sokoban, an evolution of Hiroyuki Imabayashi’s 1981 block-pusher. Here, you have a series of D&D-style characters who each interact with the environment in different ways. The Warrior shoves multiple blocks at once, the Wizard teleports to swap places with heroes or obstacles, the Thief can pull boxes instead of pushing them, and the Cleric protects both himself and the party from harm, allowing you to cross otherwise-fatal squares.
If that doesn’t take your fancy, you can opt to head in another direction first. From Alan Hazelden we get Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes, all about sending rocks bouncing across disjointed islands to create walkable paths, and Mirror Isles, where you’re reflecting the position of your hero and various objects to traverse otherwise impassable gaps. Then there’s Blow’s spin on Sean Barrett’s Promestt, a cave-diving challenge that involves manipulating light beams. Standing in the blue one lets you push objects, the yellow one lets you destroy them, the green one allows you to pass through walls, and so on.
It wouldn’t be a Jonathan Blow game without a twist, and these four particular styles were chosen because they were primed to be smashed together. After you’ve established the basics, you start to reach areas where multiple zones collide. Suddenly your fantasy heroes find themselves teaming up with our mirror-pushing protagonist to reflect threatening goblins through mirrors and drop them into the sea.
I’m dozens of hours and hundreds of puzzles deep, yet it feels very much like I’m just scratching the surface. The total ‘solve count’ comes in at 920, I’m told, but that includes sections where multiple puzzles come together, pushing the actual number of individual head-scratchers into the thousands. Yet it feels rather distinct from The Witness. Perhaps that’s a matter of perspective. Rather than being the sole actor exploring a world in first person, I’m directing these people – each of whom is a defined character with a story to tell – from above, giving the whole experience more of a traditional puzzle-book vibe.
At first, that left me feeling a little cold, because I adored wandering about the world of The Witness. A couple of hours in, all those concerns were forgotten. That shift was bolstered by the teased-out narrative elements here, which I’m more invested in than I was the abstract pondering of its precursor. More than that, Order of the Sinking Star is very much its own thing, and I don’t get the sense that Blow is attempting to chase the highs of what he’s made before. Instead, he’s simply created something fresh for players to enjoy. In that, he’s absolutely succeeded.
There’s no greater testament to that achievement than some of the tougher levels, where I’ve spent multiple hours over two or three play sessions arriving at a solution, and yet never once felt the urge to reach for help (there were obviously no guides pre-release, but we did have access to developer assistance if needed). Sometimes, it feels like I’m at a dead-end, and I step away – either from that particular puzzle, because there are usually many more open to me, or from the game itself – only to return later and almost instantly strike a brainwave.
Whenever I visit my parents, there’s a moment each morning where we sit around quietly in the living room with a coffee, working on our puzzles of choice. My dad favors Codewords, while my mum and I are both ardent Knotwords enthusiasts. In much the same way, Order of the Sinking Star has become the digital book I’m cozying up with as I sip my morning bean juice (or, frequently, leave it consigned to the desk as my brain locks in on a particularly tough test). I suspect it will continue to hold that spot long after 2026 is out.
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