Prolific game designer Jonathan Blow, best known for his work on puzzle platformer Braid and puzzle adventure game The Witness, revealed his next project during The Game Awards, named Order of the Sinking Star. The game is developed by Blow’s studio, Thekla, Inc., and will be published by Arc Games.
During a pre-reveal hands-off session last week, GamesBeat saw a lengthy demonstration of the game from Blow himself alongside commentary and design insights into the game’s structure and gameplay.
A big part of what sticks out with Order of the Sinking Star is that it’s a game built with layers of complexity and meaning. In the game, you are transported to a mysterious land of curious magic and mind-bending puzzles. Braid was a platformer that used time-rewinding for novel situations, and The Witness was all about grids and mazes, and now this new game has its own central mechanic that it builds upon and expands gradually as well: moving blocks around.
The world of Order of the Sinking Star is split up into several different regions that each feature their own gimmicks, as well as unique characters that each have their own strengths and quirks. Gameplay unfolds from an isometric third-person angle, instead of a side-view like Braid or a first-person view like The Witness.
For example, there is a warrior character who can only push blocks, whereas the thief character can only pull blocks. And since he is a thief, he compulsively tries to take any block he can grab, so you have to be very precise and careful with positioning.
On the other hand, there is a wizard character who uses his magic to teleport and switch places with blocks. Alternating between these three characters in unique stages and seeing how the regions unfold and evolve over time is a big part of the underlying gameplay.
Once the initial portion of the demonstration was over, Blow zoomed out on the overworld map to show what felt like an endless sprawling of continents and levels. Players will be free to explore however they please.
“Order of the Sinking Star is the biggest game I’ve worked on, and also the most collaborative,” Jonathan Blow, founder of Thekla, Inc., said in a prepared statement. “It’s a kind of game design supercollider that brings together ideas from many designers to create a puzzle landscape that’s much more intricate and vast than what has come before. We’ve successfully pushed the limits of what is possible in a puzzle adventure. The game is just incredibly complex and deep, and I can’t wait to show more as we move toward launch in 2026.”
Order of the Sinking Star has been in development for the better part of 10 years using a custom-built game engine and will feature over 1,000 hand-crafted puzzles. The game is slated for release on PC initially in 2026, with additional platforms to be revealed at a later date.
After Order of the Sinking Star releases, Thekla, Inc. will give out the custom-built game engine for free as an open-source project.