Order of the Sinking Star Beginner's Guide: Best World Order, the Rewind System, and What to Do First

If you read nothing else, do these five things:

A short palace tutorial puts you in control of the Queen and teaches the two moves everything else builds on: pushing blocks and rewinding time. It is brief, and it ends in the Overworld, at a junction called the Crossroads, where four paths lead north, east, south, and west into four different puzzle worlds.

Two things to do before you pick one. First, take the map lying at the Crossroads — the overworld is covered in fog that only clears as you explore, and the map is how you find your way back to puzzles you abandon. Second, listen to the recording left at the Crossroads by the explorer who came before you. It gives the advice this guide is about to give, in the game's own words: make progress in the north and east first.

All four worlds are open early, but they are not equal. Achievement unlock rates (Exophase's tracked-player sample, mid-October

2026) show what share of players in that sample have finished each world's opening campaign — treat it as a difficulty poll cast by the tracked player base:

Play them in that order: north, east, then south and west once the game's habits are in your hands. Nothing enforces this, and dipping into another world when you are stuck is healthy — but making the south your first world is the most common way new players bounce off this game.

The north world is built from Jonah Ostroff's Heroes of Sokoban, and it unfolds in four sets: Heroes 1, Heroes 2: Monsters, Heroes 3: Bard, Druid, and the capstone, Heroes Together. Heroes 1 introduces the opening trio:

The trio starts separated, and you switch control between them mid-puzzle. The one idea to internalise early: every hero's ability is always on, and the puzzles are built around that compulsion. The Thief must pull, the Bard's aura (she arrives in Heroes 3, alongside the Druid, who turns things to stone and back) drags nearby objects along whether you want it to or not, and the roster is completed by the Cleric, who is immune to monster damage. There is no "using" an ability at the right moment — there is only positioning around what your heroes cannot help doing.

This is the most important section in this guide. The rewind system is unlimited:

New players underuse this. They treat undo as a limited resource and play cautiously, the way Sokoban games have trained them to for decades. Shake that habit off in the first hour: push first, rewind to test the alternative, and let the game absorb your mistakes. It is built to.

Alongside rewind, the tutorial also hands you a second system: you can slow time down or speed it up at will. Most of the game barely needs it, which is why beginners forget it exists — until the south world. In Skipping Stones, lily pads drift and currents flow in real time: speed time up to bring a pad into reach, slow it down when a push has to land precisely. If a southern puzzle feels impossibly twitchy, you are probably playing it at full speed.

Between every pair of worlds sits a gold room: six in total (Heroes×Mirrors, Heroes×Stones, Heroes×Beamcasters, Mirrors×Stones, Mirrors×Beamcasters, Stones×Beamcasters). Inside, the two worlds' rules run at the same time, and solving the room's puzzles lights stars on a 10-star meter — fill it past the white line between the seventh and eighth stars and the room's teleporter to the Antipode switches on.

Two facts keep beginners out of trouble here. First, a gold room cannot be opened from one world alone: its door demands real progress in both parent worlds, in a specific order, and steps done out of order simply do not work. Second, the earliest one most players reach is HxM (Heroes×Mirrors), in the north-east — more than half of the tracked players in Exophase's sample (54.91%) have opened it, far ahead of the other five. When you have finished the opening campaigns in the north and east, that is your first gold room. The other five belong to the mid and late game, and our gold rooms guide covers how the system works across all six.

Vault of the Beamcasters (west) is a fine world, but it breaks the pattern the other three teach: instead of self-contained rooms, it is one interconnected underground map. Progress means hunting gems that grant the Explorer's beams new powers — phasing through walls, smashing boulders, teleporting — and a wrong move made half an hour ago can quietly block a corridor you need now. Players do finish it third and move on; just know it asks for patience the other worlds do not, and go in with your rewind habit already formed.

Order of the Sinking Star is enormous — officially over 1,000 puzzles, and the developer's own estimate for solving absolutely everything runs to 500 hours or more. Do not let that number sit on you. The first ending is deliberately reachable: activate any four of the six gold-room teleporters and you can travel to the Antipode and finish the game. One reviewer reached that ending having solved 280 of the roughly 920 overworld puzzles — under a third of the map. Reviewer accounts put that first ending at roughly 40 to 50-plus hours; two further endings (Antipode High and Antipode Low) wait behind it for players who keep going, and the Completionist achievement — finish every overworld puzzle — currently sits at 0.29% in Exophase's tracked sample. Treat the first ending as the game, and everything after as the encore.

Can I play the four worlds in any order? Yes. Nothing locks you in or out, and switching worlds when stuck is the intended way to play. The north → east → south/west order in this guide is a difficulty recommendation — the game itself enforces nothing.

Is there a hint system? No — there is no in-game hint system at all. Your substitutes are rewinding, switching to another world for a while, and the zoomed-out map views. (Thekla's official Discord is the developer's own suggested place to ask when you are truly stuck.)

Can I miss anything permanently? Nothing in the game's design points that way: puzzles keep their state, endings are tiered rather than exclusive, and achievements track cumulative completion. Play in any order without worrying about locking yourself out.

How long is the game? Roughly 40–50+ hours to the first ending by reviewer accounts (the developer's own pre-release guess was 50–60). Solving everything is a far larger project — the developer cites up to 250 hours at a normal pace and 500+ for full completion.

Does the demo carry over? Yes, on Steam: progress from the free 100+ puzzle demo carries straight into the full game.

Is it good on Steam Deck? Yes — the game is Steam Deck Verified, with full controller support and full controller remapping.