Order of the Sinking Star’s Puzzles Impress, Story Leaves Unsettled

The Next Fest demo opens with a menu prompt offering computer-generated voiceovers as placeholders, likely AI judging by the demo’s Steam page disclosure. You can leave them on or choose “No Clankers!”—a cheeky option that makes you furrow your brow. That tone feels in keeping with the director, Jonathan Blow, who has a history of putting his foot in his mouth, and it seems likely to be a metatextual thread in the game.

Order of the Sinking Star is Blow’s first project since The Witness and is a massive quilting of several other indie puzzle games licensed by him. The game sits on a chain of islands split into four regions, each housing hundreds of little puzzles. The trailer suggested brain-pickling Sokoban akin to Stephen’s Sausage Roll, but the demo honestly recalled the Bananas Gorilla segments from Busytown in a complimentary way.

Region one lets you control a trio: one pushes, one pulls, and the third trades places with whatever he looks at, and working them in tandem leads to stoogian hijinx that force careful planning.

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