The review embargo for Order of the Sinking Star lifted at 6 a.m. Pacific on Wednesday, a day before Thekla and publisher Arc Games release Jonathan Blow’s first game since The Witness on PC (Steam), PS5 and Switch 2 on October 8 for $29.99. It is an enormous Sokoban-style puzzle adventure that stitches four block-pushing games, each built on designs licensed from other puzzle makers, into one overworld where their rules eventually collide. We collected 28 numeric scores by late Wednesday morning, and they put the NGC Rating at 83, one point above OpenCritic’s top-critic average of 82 at the same point. The range runs from 60 to 100, which is wide for a game that nearly every critic agrees is brilliantly designed. Most of that spread comes from two arguments, one about the sheer size of the game and its story, and another that only Switch 2 owners need to worry about.
That 83 is the plain average of the 28 numeric critic scores listed below, each converted to a 100-point scale, rather than a copy of any aggregator’s number.
| Outlet | Published | Score | Normalized bar |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shacknews | 10/10 | 100 | |
| Noisy Pixel | 10/10 | 100 | |
| MonsterVine | 5/5 | 100 | |
| Digital Chumps | 9.5/10 | 95 | |
| Screen Rant | 9/10 | 90 | |
| Everyeye.it | 9/10 | 90 | |
| GamingTrend | 90/100 | 90 | |
| Nintenduo | 90/100 | 90 | |
| Metro GameCentral | 9/10 | 90 | |
| TechRaptor | 9/10 | 90 | |
| COGconnected | 88/100 | 88 | |
| Pizza Fria | 8.75/10 | 88 | |
| Analog Stick Gaming | 8.5/10 | 85 | |
| CrazyGameCommunity.it | 8.5/10 | 85 | |
| GameSpot | 8/10 | 80 | |
| DualShockers | 8/10 | 80 | |
| Hardcore Gamer | 4/5 | 80 | |
| Gameliner | 4/5 | 80 | |
| PSX Brasil | 80/100 | 80 | |
| ComicBook | 4/5 | 80 | |
| GameBlast | 8/10 | 80 | |
| Nintendo Life | 8/10 | 80 | |
| Console-Tribe | 80/100 | 80 | |
| CGMagazine | 7/10 | 70 | |
| WayTooManyGames | 7/10 | 70 | |
| Jump Dash Roll | 7/10 | 70 | |
| Push Square | 6/10 | 60 | |
| SmashPad | 3/5 | 60 |
Excluded: Polygon and Kotaku (unscored impressions pieces) and PCMGAMES (listed on OpenCritic with a 'Recommended' verdict and no number). GameSpot's 8/10 is taken from its Metacritic listing because the review page blocked our fetch. SmashPad's 3/5 comes from the rating box on its review page, since OpenCritic shows no score for it. Pizza Fria's page shows 8.75, which OpenCritic rounds to 8.8. Collected October 7, 2026 (PT).
Where critics agree: the puzzles themselves
Even the lowest scores start from admiration. Thekla’s August release announcement credits design contributions from Alan Hazelden (Mirror Isles, Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes), Sean Barrett (Promesst), Jonah Ostroff (Heroes of Sokoban) and Patrick Traynor (Patrick’s Parabox) among others, and the reviews describe how those ideas are first taught separately in the north, east, south and west of the map and then combined in the Gold Rooms between them. Shacknews gave it a 10 and wrote that its puzzles “are perfectly designed to make you feel spectacularly stupid and then phenomenally smart,” while MonsterVine, also at full marks, called it “one of the best puzzle games I’ve ever played” and said there are no filler puzzles that simply rehash earlier ones.
Two design choices come up again and again as the reason the difficulty stays bearable. The first is the rewind and reset system, which lets you scrub back move by move or restart instantly. Screen Rant compared its friction-free failure to Super Meat Boy’s instant restarts, and GamingTrend pointed out that there are no real fail states, time limits or soft locks. The second is the open structure. Noisy Pixel describes backing out of a region where it was stuck, using the miniature fast-travel map to try somewhere else and returning later, and Hardcore Gamer says it is rare to be stuck down a single path. That matters in a game that offers no hints at all.
Where they split: the scale, the story and the lack of help
The disagreement is less about quality than about how much of it anyone wants. GameSpot gave it an 8 and suggested the game “might work better had it been a bit more curated in deploying its massive pile of puzzles,” though it decided the occasional overcomplication is “an affordable price of admission.” Jump Dash Roll felt its scale “occasionally turns intellectual discovery into something resembling homework,” and DualShockers said that after a while the reward for solving a puzzle was often just another puzzle. Push Square, at 6/10 the joint-lowest score, praised the polish and the individual designs but concluded that the game “runs out of steam before it gets the chance to really start to flex,” and that it could not face another 50 to 100 hours of harder puzzles with characters it found dull.
The story is the most common complaint. Hardcore Gamer called it “the only real downside,” SmashPad called it the game’s “biggest weakness by far,” and GameSpot found the plot elements “pretty thin” through many tens of hours. A few reviewers disagree. ComicBook said its slow-burn narrative “develops into an engaging story,” and GamingTrend thought the voice cast worked with “a relatively strong script.” The missing hint system splits critics in a similar way. Metro warned that it “will definitely frustrate some,” Nintendo Life noted that the game sometimes refuses a clever workaround and makes you solve a puzzle the intended way, and SmashPad raised a separate accessibility concern, saying the colour-coded beams in the western region could be hard to read for colourblind players.
| Outlet | Score | On the size | On the story |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shacknews | 10/10 | Layered mechanics and a post-credits continuation make it “the ultimate Sokoban experience” | Not a sticking point |
| MonsterVine | 5/5 | Several dozen hours in, with roughly 600 puzzles still to go, and no filler | Not a sticking point |
| GamingTrend | 90/100 | Stalled for hours at times, but the open map helps | “Relatively strong script” and a slow-burn narrative |
| ComicBook | 4/5 | Huge variety, though some mechanics need clearer explanation | Slow start that becomes “an engaging story” |
| GameSpot | 8/10 | Would benefit from more curation | “Pretty thin” |
| Hardcore Gamer | 4/5 | Always something else to try | “The only real downside” |
| Jump Dash Roll | 7/10 | Scale can feel like homework | Feels detached from the puzzles |
| Push Square | 6/10 | “Runs out of steam” before it shows its best ideas | Verbose dialogue, dull characters |
| SmashPad | 3/5 | Great with momentum, demoralising when stuck | “Biggest weakness by far” |
Nobody has seen the whole game yet
It is worth knowing how much of the game these verdicts are based on. Blow told PC Gamer around the game’s reveal that a completionist might spend around 500 hours with it, and Metro counted more than 1,400 puzzles. No reviewer claims to have finished everything. The most anyone describes is reaching one of the endings, and the two unscored impressions we excluded are based on roughly 10 and 20-plus hours.
| Outlet | Score | How far they say they got |
|---|---|---|
| Nintenduo | 90/100 | Played to the first ending on Switch 2 |
| GamingTrend | 90/100 | Uncovered the map and reached one of several endings |
| TechRaptor | 9/10 | More than 40 hours, with screenshots taken over 50 |
| MonsterVine | 5/5 | Several dozen hours, an estimated 600 puzzles left |
| Metro GameCentral | 9/10 | Had the game weeks early and did not complete everything |
| GameSpot | 8/10 | “Many tens of hours” |
| DualShockers | 8/10 | Doubts anyone finishes in under 40 hours |
| Polygon | Unscored | More than 20 hours, “still very much in the surface layer” |
| Kotaku | Unscored | About 10 hours after receiving code late |
At $29.99 that scale looks like remarkable value on paper, and several reviewers say so. The flip side, which Polygon captured when it said no game had ever left it more tired after each session, is that the number of puzzles is not much use to someone who stops after 30 hours. Thekla’s Steam announcements also list bundles at launch that take 10% off when paired with Animal Well, Mewgenics or the soundtrack.
Switch 2 is where the warnings are
The platform averages barely move. The 11 PC scores in our table average 84, the nine PS5 scores 83 and the eight Switch 2 scores 82, so a quick look at the numbers would suggest every version is equally safe, but the reviews themselves tell a different story. Five of the eight Switch 2 reviews describe frame-rate drops or bugs, while the PS5 and PC reviews we read are mostly clean.
| Platform reviewed | Scores | Average | What the reviews report |
|---|---|---|---|
| PC | 11 | 84 | CrazyGameCommunity found it smooth everywhere, including the overworld. SmashPad’s copy sometimes started on a frozen black screen from Steam. Pizza Fria played on PC and Steam Deck, and Thekla says the game is Steam Deck Verified. |
| PS5 | 9 | 83 | GamingTrend said it “ran flawlessly on PS5 Pro” and Push Square praised the polish. GameBlast noted a few slips, such as missing subtitles on some dialogue and sound effects that drop out. |
| Switch 2 | 8 | 82 | Nintenduo, TechRaptor, COGconnected, CGMagazine and WayTooManyGames report slowdown, mostly in the overworld and when the map is zoomed out. Metro, Nintendo Life and Console-Tribe do not raise it. |
The Switch 2 problems range from mild to serious. Nintenduo still gave it a 90 but said the only thing holding it back is Switch 2 performance that needs polishing, describing stutter in the largest areas, especially around flowing water and when viewing the map from above, along with heavier battery drain than it expected. COGconnected found that puzzles run smoothly but the overworld has a lower frame rate, and said the developers have already patched odd bugs that could halt progress, though some may still crop up. CGMagazine saw frame drops in bigger areas both docked and handheld. TechRaptor scored it a 9 but described a reset bug that could leave blocks in impossible places, which it believed only affects Switch 2, and ended with the advice that the Switch version deserves “a second guess for right now.” The harshest account comes from WayTooManyGames, which said the hub’s frame rate could “tank into the single digits,” that 30fps was the best it saw in puzzles, and that a display bug stopped it from playing docked at all.
Because the game is turn-based and grid-based, none of these reviewers say slowdown made a puzzle harder to solve. It is still an odd fit for the version Blow himself promoted for short portable sessions when the Switch 2 release was announced in May. Arc Games has not published Switch 2 patch notes that we could find, so on launch day the only fixes we can point to are the ones COGconnected says have already landed. Anything beyond that is unconfirmed.
Review builds were not quite the launch build
There is one more reason to read the story complaints carefully. Kotaku reported that its review build used AI placeholder voices for roughly half the characters, and SmashPad also mentions AI voices for some characters in its build. Kotaku says Thekla warned reviewers in advance and told it that players on launch day would not encounter the placeholders. That fits Thekla’s October 1 cast announcement, which lists Emily O’Brien as the Queen, Liam O’Brien as the Warrior, Darin De Paul as the Wizard and Anjali Bhimani as the Bard, and reviewers such as WayTooManyGames and GamingTrend praised the voice acting they heard. SmashPad still thinks the writing itself is the bigger issue, so finished voice acting may soften the story criticism without settling it.
Several outlets also address Blow’s political statements of recent years. Polygon reports that Alan Hazelden, whose games are adapted here, has said any profits he receives will go towards supporting underprivileged developers, and SmashPad wrote that the issue did not affect its score but did affect its recommendation. How much that weighs is a personal call, and the reviews keep it separate from their assessment of the puzzles.
Who should buy it, and on which platform
For context, Metacritic lists The Witness at 87 and Braid at 93, and Order of the Sinking Star’s platform Metascores currently sit between 83 and 86. That puts it close to The Witness rather than above it, though both earlier games were far more contained.
| If you are… | Our read of the reviews |
|---|---|
| A puzzle diehard who loved The Witness or Patrick’s Parabox | Buy. Almost every review, including the critical ones, says the puzzle design is among the best in the genre, and $29.99 is a low price for this much of it. |
| Mainly hoping for a gripping story or mystery | Wait for impressions of the finished build. The story is the most common complaint, and some reviewers played with placeholder voices. |
| Someone who relies on hints | Be cautious. There is no hint system, and several reviewers say they stalled for hours at a time. |
| Playing on PC, Steam Deck or PS5 | These are the safest versions. PC has the most reviews, Thekla lists Steam Deck Verified status, and the PS5 reviews report few technical problems. |
| Planning to play on Switch 2 | Wait for a patch unless portability matters more than smoothness. Five of eight Switch 2 reviews report slowdown, and one could not play docked. |
| Colourblind | Note SmashPad’s warning about colour-coded beams in the western region before buying. |
Taken together, the reviews describe a game that delivers on its central promise of a vast and inventive puzzle collection, and the 83 is held down mostly by people who wanted that collection to be smaller, better connected to its story, or a little kinder when they got stuck. If those things do not bother you, the critical consensus gives little reason to hesitate on PC or PS5. Switch 2 is the exception: the scores there look almost identical to the other versions, but the reviews themselves suggest waiting to see what the first patches fix.
Sources: the outlet reviews linked in the scores table; OpenCritic and Metacritic listings; the Order of the Sinking Star Steam page and its developer announcements (price, bundles, embargo time, voice cast, Steam Deck Verified status); Arc Games’ release date announcement and Switch 2 announcement; PC Gamer (Blow’s 500-hour estimate); and Metacritic pages for The Witness and Braid.