Order of the Sinking Star Review – I’ve got a thinking feeling about this

Order of the Sinking Star begins with a mystery, and soon sets another raft of mysteries on top of it. You are Queen Effia, finding yourself roaming the foreign halls of an incessant and obtuse place, your knowledge of the land growing as you uncover the pathways through it.

Viewed from the top down, you’re presented with a series of sliding puzzles, beginning from that basic game device of pushing a rock out of the way, and building in difficulty, fiendishness and obtuseness to a point where you’ll begin to question everything you know.

While you’re the Queen in the overworld, you journey into four other timelines, with each area boasting its own mechanics and narrative threads to pull on. So the Heroes of Hauling initially sees you controlling a company of ‘movers’, Tif, Valens and Izzy. These three have unique skills: Valens can push, Tif can pull, and Izzy can swap places with anything he lays eyes on, whether that’s a person, a block or an enemy. They’re then joined by Aiah whose protective aura keeps her safe from harm, and the other members of the party if, and only if, they’re stood next to her, with further movers joining as you delve even further.

This leads to some pretty heady conundrums from the very start, as you factor in pressure plates, prisons and evil creatures, while the maze like structures constrict your movements to a point where the solution often seems impossible. Still, as the newest project from creator Jonathon Blow (of Braid and The Witness fame) you’re probably expecting one or two mindboggling moments and eccentricities.

Order of the Sinking Star is, unusually, built on the foundations/inspirations of four smaller, indie games, bringing together mechanics from Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes and Mirror Isles, both by Alan Hazelden, to Promesst 1-3 by Sean Barrett, and Heroes of Sokoban (1, 2, & 3) by Jonah Ostroff. Each of these has, however, been hugely expanded, reworked and amalgamated to create a puzzle game that is as expansive as it is enigmatic, melding the core spirit of those titles while creating something new.

The four areas, which you can tackle in any order you like, are built on four central moving-block mechanics: sliding blocks, mirrors, skipping stones and magical beams. The way they’re implemented, though, is truly incredible, building to sections that are so complex as to require every single one of your brain cells to succeed.

You can roll back each of your actions with repeated presses of the undo button, and even wholesale restart a level if you’ve made a hash of it. Blow wants you to progress, even in the face of adversity, and you’re given the tools to explore different possibilities, while you unlock the subtleties of Order of The Sinking Star.

It is, of course, brutally tough at times. I often found that I knew what I needed to do, but that the steps to achieving it were so esoteric that I often wanted to claw my own eyes out – in a vaguely good way, instead of an Event Horizon kind of way. If you’re the kind of person that enjoys an intellectual fight with yourself, then Order of the Sinking Star will delight you, with a steady stream of new and confusing mechanics as you progress, it continues to push you every step of the way.

It is the kind of game where you might wonder if you’re having fun. I have sat stumped for at least 45 minutes by a single screen puzzle, vainly moving objects, people and enemies around in the hope that I can stumble upon the solution, or find the steps to achieve what I know needs to happen. I don’t often have to put my controller down to take a break because a game is hurting my head, but Order of the Sinking Star achieved that within a few short hours.

If puzzle games are your bag, you might still fall for Order of the Sinking Star. I love the atmosphere, the little narrative asides from the characters, and the way that builds up a picture of who they are and why they’re here, trapped in this otherworldly place. The visuals are bright and clear, and it’s very, very engaging if you’ve got the patience, and are willing to feel like your brain is breaking.

The fact you can also take time out from one area and shift over to another keeps things fresh, and it was rare to come to a complete crashing halt. It does recommend that you start with Heroes of Hauling, but you may well find that you vibe much better with a different set of puzzles first; I found Vault of the Beamcasters – the section you’re actually warned off at the start – to immediately be my bag, while the calming waters of the Skipping Stones area regularly drove me to distraction.

The only true downside on Switch 2 is that Order of the Sinking Star’s performance isn’t always amazing, which seems odd for a top-down game that looks nice, but not that nice. Still, any wobbles in the frame rate do absolutely nothing to put you off, and they neither help nor hinder your solution or route through a level. Unfortunately.