Order of the Sinking Star Beginner Guide

Adjusting to the brain-bending logic of Jonathan Blow’s latest puzzle masterpiece can feel incredibly daunting at first. If you want to find your footing quickly, start your journey by heading north or east from the central hub, where the learning curves are much gentler. This order of the sinking star beginner guide will give you the essential foundation to navigate the early zones, understand the core mechanics, and survive the trials ahead.

As you venture deeper into the game’s massive interconnected landscape, you will quickly realize that mastery requires patience and a willing spirit of experimentation.

Here is a quick look at what we will cover to get you up to speed:

• Overview of the four main worlds
• The best starting path for new players
• Deep dive into the Northern, Eastern, Southern, and Western zones
• How distinct mechanics eventually blend together
• Essential tips for handling roadblocks

Overview of the Four Major Worlds

While each of these sub-worlds originally existed as standalone puzzle concepts, this game seamlessly weaves them into a single, massive open-world tapestry. Your journey begins at the Crossroads, a central hub with paths branching out in the four cardinal directions.

Direction	Region	Primary Mechanic
North	Heroes of Hauling	Control a party of heroes, using their individual push/pull powers to clear rooms.
East	The Mirror Isles	Manipulate mirrors to reflect and teleport your character and objects across water.
South	Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes	Push stepping stones into the sea to forge paths alongside a talking boat.
West	Vault of the Beamcasters	Use colored beams and gems to grant yourself puzzle-solving abilities.

These distinct regions draw heavy inspiration from classic indie design concepts, including Jonah Ostroff’s Heroes of Sokoban, Alan Hazelden’s Mirror Isles and Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes, and Sean Barrett’s Promesst. Even if you have played those original titles, keep in mind that the specific layouts and puzzles here are entirely fresh and custom-made for this adventure.

Which Way Should You Go First?

Although the game allows you to explore any cardinal direction right from the start, your choice will heavily impact your early experience. Pay close attention to the audio recording in the middle of the Crossroads; it explicitly advises you to head North or East first, while warning you to steer clear of the West.

• North and East offer the smoothest learning curves, introducing simple mechanics that let you build confidence before the maps expand dramatically.
• West drops you straight into a dense, Metroidvania-style maze where you must collect gems to bypass obstacles. I highly recommend saving this punishing gauntlet for later.
• South sits right in the middle, offering an open-ended structure where it is easy to overthink your solutions. It also features some light timing elements.

Do not let the difficulty of the harder zones scare you off permanently; they are simply designed for players who have already mastered the basic logic elsewhere. If you ever get stuck, you can return to the Crossroads instantly via the menu. Swapping regions when your brain gets tired is easily the best habit you can build early on.

Exploring the North: Heroes of Hauling

This region frames its puzzle-solving around a classic fantasy narrative where you must track down the elusive Magistrate Reynard. You will guide an expanding party of characters, starting with three initial heroes who use their specific grid-movement powers to clear blocked paths.

Your starting party consists of three distinct classes:

• Valens: A stalwart warrior who can push any number of blocks, monsters, or fellow heroes in a line.
• Piff: An agile thief who pulls whatever object or character is directly behind her when she moves.
• Isador: A powerful wizard who swaps positions with whatever target he attempts to push.

As you push deeper into the northern territory, three additional companions will join your ranks to complicate the grid logic:

• The Bard: Uses her music to charm and control all entities within a two-tile radius.
• The Druid: Crystallizes living targets, converting monsters or allies into solid stone (though already crystallized targets revert to plants).
• The Cleric: Grants complete invincibility to any adjacent companions, protecting them from environmental hazards.

Be careful when positioning your party, as hostile goblins and deadly dragons roam these rooms and will instantly eliminate any hero they catch off guard.

Exploring the East: The Mirror Isles

Here, you take control of a traveling merchant navigating a series of small islands. By aligning mirrors, you can reflect your position to instantly teleport yourself and other loose objects across the water.

Things get delightfully weird once you realize you can use overlapping reflections to duplicate yourself. Early on, you will just be shoving rocks and adjusting mirror angles, but the difficulty of these perspective puzzles ramps up remarkably fast.

Exploring the South: Skipping Stones

Set in a sprawling, open archipelago, this zone puts you at the helm of a talking boat. While the beautiful scenery is relaxing, many players find the open-ended nature of these puzzles to be the most deceptive and challenging of the four starting areas.

Core Southern Mechanics

• Stone Bridges: Push heavy stones into the water; if they collide, they link up to form walkable pathways.
• Lily Pad Navigation: Ride floating lily pads across currents by throwing stones in the opposite direction of where you want to travel.
• Multi-Island Setup: Several puzzles require coordinating stone movements across entirely separate islands simultaneously.
• Time Dilation: Do not worry about tight reaction windows during timing puzzles, as you can use a dedicated button to slow down time.

Exploring the West: Vault of the Beamcasters

Rather than a series of isolated puzzle rooms, the western vault is a massive, contiguous cavern system. Playing as a caver equipped with a heavy gem vest, you must gather glowing gems to activate stationary beam emitters.

Beam Colors and Character Abilities

Stepping into an active beam tempers your vest with unique properties depending entirely on the color of the light:

Beam Color	Granted Ability
Yellow	Smash fragile obstacles blocking your path.
Red	Temporarily deactivate restrictive red energy barriers.
Green	Phase directly through solid walls.
Orange	Teleport forward one tile, bypassing gaps and solid barriers.
Cyan	Push objects (which the caver normally cannot do).
Violet	Dash instantly to the far end of the beam path.
Dark Blue	An elusive mechanic that remains a mystery to even experienced players.

The real complexity starts when different colored beams intersect, granting you multiple active powers simultaneously. Furthermore, because your gem vest is so bulky, you cannot turn around in place; you must have a completely clear adjacent tile to pivot sideways.

Essential Cavern Artifacts

As you explore deeper into the vault, you will discover two key artifacts that dramatically expand your puzzle options:

• The Rod: Allows you to physically push the beam emitters themselves from a distance.
• The Torque: Grants you the ability to alter the output direction of active beams.

How the Different Mechanics Combine

These four zones only remain isolated during the opening stages of your journey. Once you clear the introductory challenges of each region—which typically takes about ten hours—the boundaries dissolve, and the game begins blending their distinct mechanics. Prepare yourself to solve complex puzzles that mix light beams with mirrors, or require coordinating fantasy heroes alongside floating stepping stones.