According to Wccftech, at The Game Awards 2025, developer Jonathan Blow and his studio Thekla, Inc. announced their next project, a narrative puzzle game called Order of the Sinking Star. The game is scheduled to launch on PC sometime in 2026, with additional platforms to be confirmed later. Blow calls it “the biggest game” he’s worked on, featuring over a thousand puzzles. The project is highly collaborative, incorporating design work from notable figures like Alan Hazelden, Sean Barrett, and Marc ten Bosch, among others. The game is being published by Arc Games, whose CEO, Yoon Im, stated their belief it will be the “premier and innovative puzzle adventure of this generation.”
The Puzzle Supercollider
Here’s the thing about Jonathan Blow: he doesn’t just make puzzle games, he makes *statements* about puzzle games. Braid recontextualized time. The Witness was a monolithic, obsessive exploration of a single idea. Now, with Order of the Sinking Star, the statement seems to be about scale and collaboration. Calling it a “game design supercollider” is a bold claim. It suggests they’re not just making a big puzzle box, but smashing together entire design philosophies from some of the smartest minds in the indie scene to see what new elements they can create.
Can More Cooks Make a Better Broth?
This is where it gets really interesting, and maybe a little risky. Blow’s previous games felt intensely personal, almost like auteur projects. Bringing in a crew of all-star puzzle designers—the people behind A Monster’s Expedition, Patrick’s Parabox, Miegakure—is a fascinating shift. Will it feel like a cohesive vision, or a “greatest hits” compilation of clever mechanics? The promise of an “intricate and vast” puzzle landscape that’s more than the sum of its parts is incredibly enticing. But melding those distinct design voices into one seamless world is arguably the biggest puzzle of all.
The 2026 Wait and the PC-First Strategy
A 2026 release window means we’re in for a long wait. And announcing it as a PC-first title makes perfect sense for this audience. This isn’t a casual pickup-and-play experience; it’s a deep, complex dive that will likely benefit from the modding community and the precise input of a mouse and keyboard, at least initially. The mention of other platforms coming later is standard, but it signals they know the audience for a game this niche and demanding is primarily on PC. It gives them time to perfect that version before tackling console ports.
What This Means for Puzzle Games
Basically, Blow and Thekla are trying to push the entire genre forward again. After The Witness, we saw a wave of first-person environmental puzzlers. Order of the Sinking Star, with its collaborative, super-sized approach, could very well set a new benchmark for scope and ambition in narrative puzzle design. The real question is whether they can deliver on that “supercollider” promise and create something that feels truly new, and not just… more. Given the track record, I’m leaning towards betting on them. But 2026 is a long way off.
