Order of the Sinking Star

Fans of the story like the voice cast, the mystery of how the characters came to this world, and the fact that dialogue plays while you keep solving: "One very nice aspect is that you can continue playing the game while the narration plays out." The critics are blunt. Several call the writing childish or clichéd ("Why does every character in this game talk like they're talking to a child?"), complain that the banter is constant ("this one never shuts up."), or say the story is too scattered to follow because regions can be played in any order. Others report the opposite problem later on: "especially later on you'll get several hours with no dialogue at all", and scenes that play out of order. A couple of late-game players dislike long philosophical audio logs that read like a lecture. One critic suggests turning the voice volume all the way down, though another found that the dialogue still holds things up with the volume off. Writing and dialogue come up in more of the negative reviews than any other complaint.

Reviewers who talk about difficulty agree the game is hard. Most of them call the challenge fair, while a few say specific puzzles were "diabolical" or that they looked up solutions after 20 to 30 minutes. Hints divide the few who discuss them. Some ask for an optional hint system ("The main thing I wish this game had is some sort of hint system for places where I get really stuck."), and one player who expected the early regions to keep teaching gently felt the game broke that trust. Others warn that looking things up ruins it ("don't be a cheat and look up the puzzle") and suggest sleeping on a puzzle instead. Players on both sides would like reassurance that a puzzle is solvable and that they have not softlocked themselves, especially in large levels.

Dozens of players say it runs well on Steam Deck, Linux through Proton, old GPUs and modest laptops ("I'm getting 60fps, default settings on my steam deck with no audible fans"), and that the full release runs better than the demo did. Others hit drops in specific places: the fully zoomed-out overworld map (one player reports "it started getting 10 fps" once a late area expanded it), dragon-breath particle effects, and the western beam region on weak laptops. A few mention loud fans or battery drain, and one is irritated that a game from a developer known for talking about fast software runs so heavy ("The ratio of visuals to performance is laughably bad"). Players also ask for more graphics options, better resolution scaling, 24:10 widescreen support and a fullscreen option in Steam Deck desktop mode.

The four starting regions play like separate games, and players rank them differently. Skipping Stones divides people. Some call it the hardest or least favourite, and one negative reviewer said it "was suddenly a lot more different with mechanics I did not find introduced well enough" (the same player still liked that region best, and refunded over the beam vault). Others call it a highlight: "The skipping stones area, while challenging, had some of the best puzzles I've played in a loooong time." The western beam vault draws the same split: a favourite for some, too large and trial-and-error for others. A few players dislike the timing-based puzzles in the south, though one notes that the forgiving undo and a slow-down key help.

Most players welcome the size, but a few long-haul reviewers say it eventually wore them down. One who still had hundreds of puzzles left but had lost interest wrote: "If half of the content was cut it would have been a much tighter experience." Another said it started to feel like a job, and some completionists worry about how far the full clear goes. Players who play in short daily sessions report the fewest complaints about length.