It has been *checks calendar* more than a decade since prolific developer Jonathan Blow and his studio Thekla dropped their previous game, The Witness, into our laps after roughly eight years of development. A grandly ambitious puzzler to say the least, The Witness felt like a world away from the much more accessible Braid which was released eight years prior, with the latter being a fairly straight-laced time manipulation 2D platformer and the former being a 3D first-person open world puzzler with precious little dialogue or storytelling hooks outside of trite audio recordings.
Order Of The Sinking Star PS5 Review
In comparison to both of Jonathan Blow’s previous works conversely, Order of the Sinking Star feels not only like a sensible mid-point of sorts that exists between the two, but so too does it also directly improve on much that The Witness, its immediate predecessor, did before. If The Witness felt inaccessible and daunting, Order of the Sinking Star swings in the opposite direction with breezy and encouraging accessibility. If The Witness felt obscure and emotionally sterile, Order of the Sinking Star feels by turns, direct, thoughtfully designed and imbued with generous warmth. As much as Order of the Sinking Star then is very much its own beast, so too does it also represent a fairly comprehensive course correction of what The Witness offered to players back in 2016.
Jonathan Blow’s latest puts its best foot forward from the word go, displaying the sort of commitment to removing the barriers which exist between the player and the gameplay experience, thanks to the fact that Order of the Sinking Star has perhaps the coldest opening of any video game in history. When you start the game, there are no credits, no company screens, no engine logos, you just get straight into the game in a matter of seconds and then it’s off to the races from that point on.
Order of the Sinking Star has a narrative that, unlike its verbally mute and painfully abstract predecessor, is started in earnest from that refreshingly cold opening. Initially cast as the exiled Queen Effia who finds herself unceremoniously pulled into a seemingly fragmented, liminal world, it is very quickly revealed that this realm is actually an overworld from which four entirely different self-contained worlds exist and can be discovered to the north, south, east and west within this enigmatic overworld.
Venturing to each of those worlds allows our wayward monarch to peer into them via painted stars which are left on the floor and it’s here that Order of the Sinking Star begins to slowly unfurl the wings of its substantial ambition. Each of these worlds, as it turns out, has its own collective of exiled heroes, too. From thieves and warriors, to wizards, illusionists, melancholic sailors and even a talking boat, Order of the Sinking Star boasts quite the cast of characters – and they’re all fully voiced too – making Thekla’s latest feel immediately much more easy to warm to than the emotionless audio logs glimpsed in The Witness.
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There’s a long tail to this story too as it transpires that the heroes within each of these four worlds are living their own, seemingly entirely separate narratives, which they tell through the puzzles that the player must complete. From the Hearty Heroes of Hauling of the north, a rough and tumble band of fantasy haulers who find themselves undone by a corrupt king, to the Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes of the south, which tell of a marooned sailor, quietly determined to ride the hostile waves of the high seas and return home, each of these worlds imparts a story as different to the last.
Mirroring the trajectory of its layered narrative, each of these self-contained worlds and stories very much have their own puzzle mechanics and logical language that dictate them, with one dealing with a party of individuals with varying abilities, strengths and weaknesses, such as push, pull and teleport mechanics, while another for example, has you redirecting beams of light, mixing up colours and manipulating lines of sight in order to proceed. Put simply, the massive array of different puzzles, logic types and rules all feel much fresher than the somewhat soulless grid and line based conundrums seen in The Witness.
Order of the Sinking Star isn’t just about solving one and done puzzles that exist in isolation either, it’s about learning four different logical languages which are governed by their own rules, quirks and nuances. After a helpful tutorial (again something that The Witness failed to get quite right), you’re given the foundational principles which get you going in the world that you’ve chosen and as you progress from one puzzle to the next, Order of the Sinking Star raises the difficulty just a smidge each time, encouraging you to not just remember the rules of its world but also to implement them in ways that would previously have seemed impossible. Every puzzle isn’t just a challenge; it’s a lesson intended to build your knowledge, consolidate logical assumptions and fortify your intellect for what is coming next.
Jonathan Blow’s previous penchant for time manipulation also rears its head here, as players aren’t able to just reset each puzzle if they find themselves without a solution, but so too can they also rewind time back in movement intervals, allowing a forensic adjustments to puzzle solving strategies, rather than just having to eat a wholesale restart if you naff something up.
Very often, Order of the Sinking Star makes me feel dumb as a bag of rocks and while I freely admit that isn’t an especially impressive feat these days, I still love it for that because I know that for just about every puzzle the solution isn’t opaque or poorly designed but entirely within the remit of my admittedly rather limited grey matter to solve, and then when I do, the feeling of satisfaction is absolutely immense. This is also where the overworld side of things comes into play from a functional perspective, because while you have each of this quartet of stories, Queen Effia’s overworld story also plays out alongside them, essentially layering the narrative of Order of the Sinking Star quite beautifully since our brave monarch can also leverage the powers of whomever happens to be in that world to proceed and complete puzzles in the overworld itself, pushing along her own story in the process.
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The overworld proves itself to be invaluable for another key reason. Across Order of the Sinking Star’s 1,000(!) or so handcrafted conundrums, you’re bound to find yourself stuck on one (or in my case, many) and realise that you’re simply unable to continue. By exiting to the overworld however, you can just try another puzzle within that same themed world, or if your brain happens to be entirely tapped out in regard to a particular type of mechanic, skedaddle on over to one of the other three worlds, solve some of those puzzles and I guarantee you that eventually the solution for that original brain tickler you were stuck on will come to you. It’s just a great feeling, make no mistake. Speaking of the overworld, there’s also some really friendly design embedded here too. I accidentally exited into the overworld map when I was near the end of a puzzle but when I re-entered that same puzzle, expecting to be thrust unceremoniously back at the start, I was able to simply carry on where I left off. Huzzah!
With every puzzle our protagonists chatter among themselves – slowly peeling back the veil on their individual stories and dramas, with some really rather decent voice actors to boot which makes the whole affair feel much more personable, and dare I say, human, than Jonathan Blow’s previous outing. The problem however is that because this dialogue is delivered in bite-sized fashion quite intermittently, I found it difficult to always properly frame the story and characters in my mind, especially if I’m hopping between worlds, which very much seems like the intention as I mentioned earlier.
In the grand scheme of things though, such gripes can feel a touch churlish, not least because Order of the Sinking Star’s mid and endgame fully unfurls the tapestry of Jonathan Blow’s grand vision. As our queen completes each world their characters, logical laws and mechanics are subsequently transferred and held in special ‘Gold Rooms’ which will continue to stack until every world has been completed. The Gold Rooms represent Order of the Sinking Star at its most challenging and at its most mind-blowingly synergistic as the puzzle mechanics, characters and stories from each world crisscross and collide with one another, creating all new conundrums that require a kaleidoscopic approach to solving them based on everything you know up until that point. Providing even the most talented puzzle solving savant with a stiff and lasting challenge, completing these challenges also begins to chip away at the overarching mystery behind the Order of the Sinking Star itself, as the previously disparate narratives converge.
Easily Jonathan Blow’s most ambitious effort thus far, it’s not just the fact that Order of the Sinking Star boasts more than a 1,000 handcrafted puzzles, or multiple endings that follow on from one another and expand its layered story yet further still, it’s how the game deftly intertwines and meshes it all together in surprising and rewarding ways, all the while adding hybrid complexity and challenge that never feels overbearing or overwrought. Again, Order of the Sinking Star isn’t just Jonathan Blow’s arguably best game to date, it also stands as a thorough ‘lessons learned’ digest which shows how far he and his studio Thekla have come in the intervening years since the release of The Witness more than ten years ago.
Order of the Sinking Star then isn’t just Jonathan Blow’s most epic puzzling odyssey to date, it also happens to be (Braid notwithstanding) his most accessible title in years. Though the delivery of its dialogue can feel disparate at times, that is nowhere enough to detract from the soaring calibre that Order of the Sinking Star ultimately achieves. Crafted with love at every turn (make sure you don’t skip the credits) and infinitely more respectful of the player than Blow’s previous title, The Witness, Order of the Sinking Star might just be the best puzzle game on PlayStation 5.
Order of the Sinking Star releases for PS5 on October 8, 2026.
Review code kindly provided by PR.