Order of the Sinking Star will launch on October 8, 2026, for PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC via Steam, developer Thekla and publisher Arc Games announced on August 18.
The release date was revealed alongside a new trailer, finally narrowing the puzzle adventure’s previously broad 2026 launch window. Steam Deck support is also confirmed.
The game comes from Jonathan Blow and Thekla, the team behind The Witness, and has been in development for nearly a decade. It is built around more than 1,000 hand-crafted puzzles spread across four interconnected worlds.
A Free Demo Is Available on Steam
PC players can already get an early look at Order of the Sinking Star through its free Steam demo.
The demo originally launched on June 15, 2026, for Steam Next Fest, but Thekla later extended its availability. It remains downloadable through Steam at the time of writing.
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Progress made in the demo will also carry over to the full Steam release, so players who start now will not need to begin again when the game launches in October.
The demo offers an early introduction to the game’s unusual structure, which brings together several different playable characters and puzzle systems before gradually allowing those mechanics to interact.
More Than 1,000 Puzzles Across Four Worlds
Order of the Sinking Star is a large-scale puzzle adventure built around four distinct worlds, each with its own characters, rules, dangers and mechanics.
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Players are free to move between areas rather than following a completely fixed route. If a puzzle proves difficult, they can leave it, explore elsewhere and return later. The official Steam description says the full game contains dozens of mechanics and hundreds of hours of gameplay.
The playable cast is just as unusual. Thekla has confirmed characters including a queen, thief, warrior, wizard and talking boat, with each bringing different abilities into the puzzles.
That becomes more important as the game progresses. What initially appear to be separate worlds and mechanics eventually begin crossing over, allowing characters and systems introduced in one part of the game to affect puzzles elsewhere.
PlayStation’s July hands-on preview described this as one of the game’s major turning points, with players eventually switching between characters from different worlds to solve challenges that could not be completed using a single ability.
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The game also takes a different approach to enemies. Rather than turning encounters into conventional combat sequences, creatures can function as part of the puzzle itself, forcing players to work around their behaviour and use each character’s abilities to progress.
Thekla Has Been Building It for Nearly a Decade
Development on Order of the Sinking Star began after The Witness, which launched in 2016.
Thekla says the project has been in development for nearly a decade, with the studio attempting to push several different puzzle-design ideas into one much larger game.
Its foundations draw from several earlier puzzle games, including Alan Hazelden’s Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes and Mirror Isles, Sean Barrett’s Promesst series and Jonah Ostroff’s Heroes of Sokoban games.
Rather than simply collecting those ideas in separate sections, Thekla describes the project as a “game design supercollider” in which different mechanics eventually begin interacting with each other.
The PlayStation hands-on report also noted that the game has been built by a relatively small team of around 20 people and contains multiple endings.
Order of the Sinking Star Release Date Is October 8
With the new trailer, Order of the Sinking Star now has a firm release date after spending much of the year listed simply for 2026.
The game launches on October 8, 2026, for PS5, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC via Steam, with Steam Deck also supported.
A free Steam demo is available now, and its save progress will transfer to the full PC version.
No Xbox version has been announced, and an official launch price has not yet been listed on Steam at the time of writing.