When I got to preview Order of the Sinking Star, I was pretty impressed with what I got to experience. Really dedicated puzzle games are few and far between, and I’m always interested when one has a good idea behind it. And despite being a fairly controversial figure, Johnathon Blow does still have some pedigree in the game industry that a puzzle game with his involvement is sure to be good—the double-edged sword of hinging your game on the name of one creator.
While my preview time with Order of the Sinking Star was brief enough to make me initially optimistic, the more time I spent with it, the more that optimism began to fade. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad game, and it does have a lot of creative ideas. My issue with it is, those ideas are wrapped around a game that’s so incredibly one-note that it starts to feel more like a routine than a genuine exercise in creative thinking.
Order of the Sinking Star’s story is one wrapped in mystery. Players begin the game as a queen, mysteriously transported to a strange realm where memories seem to collide. To return to her world, she must explore the worlds of those who make up the four distinct sections of this one. It’s a set of slowly unfolding stories that not only capture an interesting theme for each area, but also shine a light on the myriad characters that round it out—each one with unique personalities and motivations.
Gameplay, however, is where Order of the Sinking Star both shines and burns out. As I spoke about in my preview, it’s an ambitious prospect to have what is meant to be a collection of puzzles separated by a large world map. But unlike something like Professor Layton, where the puzzles are scattered around a place you’re meant to be investigating, this just feels like a collection of challenge rooms separated by a hub world. You’re not really being immersed in the overworld, so much as you are being forced to walk through it.
The puzzles themselves have a lot of really creative ideas behind them. The Hearty Heroes of Hauling gives players six distinct characters, all of whom can manipulate blocks in different ways—the Warrior pushes them, the Thief pulls them behind her, the Wizard trades places with them in an instant teleport, etc. As the puzzles go on and get more complex, players need to combine the abilities of all these heroes in unique ways that can get fairly interesting.
“Gameplay, however, is where Order of the Sinking Star both shines and burns out.”
The Mirror Isles gives players the ability to teleport through mirrors—the distance of which is reflected by their placement in front of each mirror. Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes has players pushing stones that will skip ahead in water, requiring them to pass by lily pads in order to push them and create platforms. And while all of these ideas are pretty unique in their own way, they’re all just variations of a block-pushing puzzle, and can get kind of tedious really fast.
Unlike a more complex puzzle that requires some deductive reasoning to figure out, every puzzle in Order of the Sinking Star is just figuring out where and how to push a block in order to progress, and with enough trial-and-error you can brute force almost every puzzle. It was rare that I had a genuine “ah ha!” moment with a puzzle, because it never really felt like I had to think all that hard in order to solve them. After a while, I just kind of tuned out as I pushed a block to one space, saw it didn’t work, rewound and pushed it to another. With enough block pushes, anything is possible.
Order of the Sinking Star does go some way to cover this, though, with a solid aesthetic that utilizes a lot of bright colours, interesting lighting mechanics, and unique fantasy designs. The soundtrack adds to this with tracks that are at times whimsical and hauntingly resonant. And while the game looks great on the Nintendo Switch 2, I did notice some frame drops in certain areas both on and off the dock—usually in the areas that were bigger or interconnected.
As I said, Order of the Sinking Star isn’t a bad game, and it does have some genuinely clever ideas that even expand in interesting ways. But the more I played it, despite acknowledging what good was in it, I just got progressively more bored. There are plenty of ways to integrate a lot of unique puzzles into one experience; it doesn’t all need to be a Sisyphean trail.
