Order of the Sinking Star Is Out Today: 1,000 Puzzles, 500 Hours, and Jonathan Blow's Wildest Bet Yet

LOS ANGELES — Ten years ago Jonathan Blow shipped The Witness and then, effectively, disappeared into a puzzle. Not literally — but close. Today, Oct. 8, 2026, whatever came out the other side is finally on sale: Order of the Sinking Star, a narrative puzzle adventure from Blow's Thekla, Inc. and publisher Arc Games, available now on Steam, Steam Deck, Switch 2, and PS5 for $29.99.

And it is big. The official site confirms what the previews have been building toward for months: more than 1,000 interconnected, hand-crafted puzzles spread across four distinct worlds, each with its own mechanics, characters, and stories, that eventually collide into each other. Blow's own estimate, per Press Start's Aug. 19 report, is roughly 500 hours to fully complete the game. Not to beat it — to fully complete it. Even a normal playthrough runs about 250 hours, per Entertainment Vine's summary of the game's scope. This is a puzzle game you could lose a season of your life to, and it's priced like a lunch for two.

None of this was the plan. Blow told Engadget back in December 2025 that the game was originally scoped as a 10-to-20-hour project. Then, in his words: "it just blew up." A decade later we have a game that, according to the game's official FAQ, was born from a desire to "push puzzle game design past its traditional limits to create the largest and greatest puzzle game ever made" — built as a "game design supercollider," smashing together the ideas of multiple puzzle designers into one combinatoric explosion.

Let's talk about that supercollider, because the names behind it are half the story. The official site's FAQ now lays out the foundation in detail: Alan Hazelden's Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes and Mirror Isles, Sean Barrett's Promesst 1-3, Jonah Ostroff's Heroes of Sokoban trilogy — plus design contributions from Zach Polansky (Enigmash), Patrick Traynor (Patrick's Parabox), Marc ten Bosch (Miegakure), and others. That's an absurd concentration of puzzle-design talent. According to the site, those games "inspire and comprise the very beginning," while the full game "explores the endless, unexpected possibilities of merging these worlds together."

There is an authorship question hanging over the launch, and it's worth handling carefully because the facts are the facts. Game File investigated how the collaborators are credited; as GoNintendo reported, an earlier press demo had signage crediting Hazelden for a section of the game, and the public demo removed it. Blow told Game File that "contributors to the game will be credited" — how and where were unconfirmed at the time of that reporting. The official site's FAQ, as it stands at launch, names the contributors and their games explicitly. The credits scroll on day one will settle whatever's left of the question. We'll be watching it.

The other big pre-launch beat was the voice cast, revealed in an Oct. 1 trailer and it's genuinely stacked for a puzzle game. Emily O'Brien (Death Stranding, Starfield) voices the Queen; Liam O'Brien (Critical Role) the Warrior; Darin De Paul (Overwatch, Marvel's Spider-Man) the Wizard; Anjali Bhimani (Overwatch, Ms. Marvel) the Bard; Erica Luttrell the Sailor; Matthew Waterson the Druid — with additional voices from Erik Braa, Andrew Kishino, Jamieson K. Price, and Sabrina Fest, plus a special appearance by Blow himself. A puzzle epic with a narrative voice cast this heavy is a real statement of intent: this isn't a puzzle pack, it's a puzzle world.

Practically speaking, the launch is generous in every direction. The PC demo is available now and your demo save data carries over to the full game, per Gematsu — no lost progress for anyone who started early. The official site's Sept. 24 price-and-bundles post set the price at $29.99 and announced launch bundles: pair Order of the Sinking Star with Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel's Mewgenics or Billy Basso's Animal Well and save 10% (Steam's bundle pages confirm both). For a game offering hundreds of hours at thirty bucks, that's about six cents an hour if you chase full completion. The price tag is doing its own talking.

Polygon named it the most notable game of October on its Switch 2 calendar — over Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen, the Resident Evil remakes, Final Fantasy Resonance, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. October's a stacked month (it's always a stacked month), but there's a real argument the month's most interesting game is a block-pushing epic from the Braid guy. For what to play alongside it, PS Plus's October lineup is live today and the Game Pass October wave just dropped.