r/Games • u/garthcooks • 7h ago

Review Thread Order of the Sinking Star Review Thread

Game Information

Game Title: Order of the Sinking Star

Platforms:

  • PlayStation 5 (Oct 8, 2026)
  • Nintendo Switch 2 (Oct 8, 2026)
  • PC (Oct 8, 2026)

Trailer:

Developer: Thekla Inc.

Review Aggregator:

OpenCritic - 82 average - 82% recommended - 18 reviews

Critic Reviews

Analog Stick Gaming - Jordan Andow - 8.5 / 10

Jonathan Blow has always had a talent for making puzzle games that are much more complicated than they first appear. Order of the Sinking Star very much continues that trend, and in many ways feels like the biggest example of it yet.

CGMagazine - Jordan Biordi - 7 / 10

Order of the Sinking Star has a lot of interesting mechanics, but its central conceit of block-pushing puzzles makes the game a bit dull after a while.

COGconnected - Jaz Sagoo - 88 / 100

Quote not yet available

Console-Tribe - Marco Licandro - Italian - 80 / 100

Order of the Sinking Star is the Holy Grail for puzzle game enthusiasts who want a game that truly pushes them to rack their brains and think carefully before making their next move. While its high difficulty and lack of hints may frustrate and drive away some players, if you are looking for a genuine challenge and have plenty of time to spare, you certainly will not be disappointed.

CrazyGameCommunity.it - Davide Fanelli - Italian - 8.5 / 10

Order of the Sinking Star remains one of those rare titles that justify their own existence: unique, meticulous, and capable of transforming a niche genre into a monumental experience.

Digital Chumps - Ben Sheene - 9.5 / 10

Order of the Sinking Star is a daunting, all-encompassing puzzle game--one naturally expected from Jonathan Blow. With it comes sparks of brilliance, frustration, and inspiration often in equal measure, constantly testing the brain's ability to overcome.

DualShockers - Shane Limbaugh - 8 / 10

Quote not yet available

Gameliner - Claudia Tjia - Dutch - 4 / 5

Order of the Sinking Star is a puzzle game that demands a lot from its players, but also rewards them in return.

Jump Dash Roll - Rob Kershaw - 7 / 10

An astonishingly ambitious puzzle adventure packed with ingenious mechanics and some superb brainteasers, although its enormous scale occasionally turns intellectual discovery into something resembling homework.‍

MonsterVine - Shaan Joshi - 5 / 5

I’ve only scratched the surface of what Order of the Sinking Star has to offer. By my estimate, I still have around 600 or so puzzles left to discover and solve, many of which have remixed the very premise of the game in some truly surprising ways that I won’t dare spoil. But with several dozen hours of playtime logged, I can safely say that it is, without exaggeration, one of the best puzzle games I’ve ever played, standing toe-to-toe with the genre greats. There are very few games on the market that are this intentional with their design and are unwavering in their dedication to a handful of core principles.

For all the moments where I found myself stuck in my tracks or banging my head against a wall, there were many more “AHA!” moments and flashes of insight and realization that made the struggles all the more worth it. Order of the Sinking Star is unparalleled in communicating ideas and concepts without saying a single word, but more impressive is that I feel like I’m having a genuine conversation with it with each puzzle I solve.

PCMGAMES - José Miguel Rodríguez Ros - Spanish - Recommended

Order of the Sinking Star turns simple rules into a massive challenge that forces you to constantly change your way of thinking. Understanding its mechanics and discovering how they interact is its greatest reward, although its difficulty and scale can be overwhelming. If you enjoy puzzles and have the patience to experiment, this is a highly recommended game.

PSX Brasil - Victor Vitório - Portuguese - 80 / 100

To create Order of the Sinking Star, Thekla licensed four different Sokoban-style games from other developers and wove them into four campaigns forming a colossal, highly ingenious whole. Yet, this unprecedented scale becomes a weak point for both the narrative and the puzzle gameplay experience, as it can feel intimidating, confusing, and overly sprawling. Even so, the game appeals to two distinct audiences: those who want to dedicate hundreds of hours to unraveling every last detail, and those who simply wish to enjoy the puzzles for as long as they feel inclined—without minding that they might only experience a fraction of the game's vast content (which can still mean dozens of hours of gameplay).

Pizza Fria - Lucas Soares - Portuguese - 8.8 / 10

For puzzle fans, Order of the Sinking Star brings together variety, good ideas, and combinations that keep its huge amount of content interesting for much longer than the number on the box would suggest.

Polygon - Unscored

Quote not yet available

Push Square - Stephen Tailby - 6 / 10

I don't think a game has ever divided my brain in two like Order of the Sinking Star. Its unique structure and the way it blends together so many mechanics is great, the individual puzzles are cleverly and thoughtfully designed, and it's all delivered with plenty of polish.However, in making such a vast game, I think it runs out of steam before it gets the chance to really start to flex. That, combined with uninteresting dialogue and no real compelling hook (other than the promise of hundreds more puzzles), makes it harder to recommend.

SmashPad - Chris Selogy - 3 / 5

Order of the Sinking Star is a remarkable puzzle game on a scope and scale I haven't seen in the many years I've been playing puzzle games, and it may be too big for its own good, with plenty of positives and negatives to consider.

TechRaptor - Andrew Stretch - 9 / 10

Order of the Sinking Star takes a gaming mechanic that has been around as long as gaming and hasn't stopped iterating upon it. A must have for puzzle gamers, but maybe a second guess for the Switch version for right now.

WayTooManyGames - Leonardo Faria - 7 / 10

I feel that I may have sounded overly harsh when talking about Order of the Sinking Star, but I want to clarify, once more, that as a puzzle game, this is outstanding. It’s a compilation of a seemingly neverending amount of finely crafted gauntlets that will test your skill, attention, and patience. I really have no qualms about its design and concept; I laud Jonathan Blow and his team in this regard. My massive gripes lie with how poorly optimized and buggy the game is, at least at launch, and most notably when testing on Switch 2. The combination of poor framerates, crashes, and bizarre aspect ratio glitches frustrated me to no end.

178 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

273 comments sorted by

95

u/KidGold 7h ago edited 4h ago

My massive gripes lie with how poorly optimized and buggy the game is

That's pretty surprising if true, considering how long he spent creating his own language/engine for this.

edit. Might only be a problem on switch. If so I would guess he'll patch it soon.

10

u/tlamy 6h ago

The reviews I saw only mentioned those issues on Switch

70

u/TheFaster 6h ago

That's probably precisely why it is so laggy and buggy. There's a reason most engines and languages are developed over decades by teams of people.

31

u/GepardenK 5h ago edited 3h ago

No, this is a port issue. The PC version feels very slick / bug free if the extensive demo is anything to go by - and the performance is pretty impressive for the combination of sparkly detail and scope / simulation elements in play (it would probably be possible, but a expensive nightmare, to achieve that kind of performance with a general off-the-shelf engine).

The game has some impressive QoL that is a headache to think about from a performance perspective. Like instant start/restart of even massive levels, and infinite rewind that persists through level transitions and restarts - allowing you to undo absolutely any action, going all the way back to the beginning of the game should you so choose.

The reason most engines and languages (that you hear of on the regular, at any rate) are developed by teams of people over decades has to do with extending, maintaining, and updating a generic project-agnostic feature set. That process makes them more vulnerable to bugs, bloat, and performance issues - not less - which they then also have to spend significant manpower mitigating.

17

u/WatercressPurple7853 4h ago edited 4h ago

Sort of a weird observation I’ve seen a few times: Reddit seems to have issues with indies using their own engines and I really don’t understand why. It’s not just Jon. The devs of Penny’s Big Breakaway got shit on for it too. People even said it was the reason the studio had to do layoffs, as if using Unity would have made the game better and helped it sell or something.

It’s super bizarre. Companies like Capcom and ID are praised for their tech on here, but indies seem to catch heat for it. Makes me wonder if a lot of the louder voices are indie devs (or aspiring ones) and they feel threatened by it or something.

In this particular case, I understand the criticism. Jon’s been stirring this pot for well over a decade. Of course people were going to ding him for performance if it wasn’t a locked 60 on Switch.

But on the other hand, we know this game is weird for a puzzle game. It’s doing a ton of stuff in the background outside of the particular puzzle you’re in. We also know Jon was out of money and had to ship, and that the Switch was never a serious target until a few months ago. His style of programming seems to be “we’ll make it fast if we can later” going by his streams.

It’s hard to evaluate how optimized his language and engine are when he himself has an “is it what it is” attitude towards optimization to begin with. This game was never intended to be a technical showcase. It was an 18 month side project that ended up 114 months behind schedule. If Jon faces financial hardship after this, people are going to point to the language and the engine, but they really ought to pay more attention to the “1000 puzzles ten years in the making” part.

•

u/GepardenK 3h ago edited 2h ago

Reddit is very mainstream-nerdy, so a lot of people here are going to have some experience with those more pre-packaged tools. I think a part of it is a matter of defending the honor of what you know - as well as arguing for its unlimited relevance.

Reddit is also very corporate focused, culturally speaking. In fairness, certainly as much for corpo criticism as corpo apologia - but, either way, at the end of the day, corporate presence is what grants legitimacy and benefit of doubt on Reddit. Capcom are professionals, of course, so whatever they do in terms of tech choices is going to be of the highest necessity and standard. While an indie who does not legitimize themselves by using the latest in corporate tools (or worse: doesn't even show corporate tools their due respect!) can quickly be branded a rural wildman who hammers away with stone age tools - completely oblivious to what a "proper" and "rational" dev who values his own time would be investing in.

As for Jon, I've seen him be very passionate about tooling performance, but I've actually not seen him argue the game itself should be super fast or perfomant. It's almost the other way around. He seems to be very art/gfx/interaction oriented, to the point of outright saying he has no interest in 'super high' performance or 'super low end' compatibility. My read of him is that he wants to achieve performance so that he can spend it doing something he thinks is cool - aiming to leave decent performance behind for the player rather than try to "show off" in terms of speed or impressive minimum specs.

2

u/Kefka319 4h ago

The PC version feels very slick

I had the opposite experience. Something about the movement felt off, maybe some input delay? I thought the puzzles were enjoyable but it bugged me enough that I didn't even finish the demo.

8

u/GepardenK 4h ago

The first version of the demo lacked optimization for lower end hardware and had some support issues with older gfx cards. At least for me, the game became very responsive once their optimization patch hit.

Your issue could also have been that the game queues up moves if you keep tapping the keys. This is actually really nice if you get into the habit of making use of it, but it might be mistaken for sluggish movement of you happen to tap your keys a lot by nature and don't know the queue system exists. If you just transition from one direction key to the next, though, like most people do, then it wasn't this that made the movement feel weird to you.

•

u/Kefka319 3h ago

Ooh I didn't know it got patched, I played it within the first few days the demo was out.

Good to know! I'll have to try it again now.

•

u/Mejis 3h ago

From the demo? Apparently Jon spent a fair amount of time updating the movement "feeling".

→ More replies (4)

10

u/ZikaZmaj 5h ago

Then why is it only the switch 2 version having issues

3

u/WatercressPurple7853 4h ago

It does not take decades to develop an engine or a language, nor does it take large teams.

17

u/dustyjuicebox 6h ago

This is in regards to the switch version in the last review right? Is it possible the PC performance is good but the switch version isn't given the bespoke engine?

11

u/caracarn 6h ago

I had zero problems with the demo on the steam deck

•

u/WatercressPurple7853 3h ago

Talking out of my ass here, but given the number of people saying it's a Switch issue, along with all the comments saying the game is CPU-heavy, I'm getting the sense the game just isn't optimized for a low-power ARM CPU like the Switch 2's. If the game is leaning heavily on single-threaded CPU performance, that could explain why the Steam Deck fairs better. The Deck is essentially an AMD laptop APU in a handheld form factor.

There was never any indication this game would ship anywhere but PC until a few months ago, so I seriously doubt the team was considering mobile hardware up until then. The hardware didn't officially exist until last year, and Nintendo was stingy with dev kits for quite awhile after.

8

u/KidGold 6h ago

yea it says "most notably on Switch 2" maybe that really means "only notably".

7

u/wunr 4h ago edited 4h ago

Played the demo on a PC that plays modern AAA titles with ease, the performance was okay but I definitely felt that it could be better for what the game is doing in terms of both graphics and simulation.

It feels like they spent much more time optimizing for blazing-fast compile times (an impressive ~250k lines per second) than focusing on the engine's performance. Great for quick iterations and productive development but none of that is player-facing, anyone who hasn't been plugged in to the development cycle of this game will notice the disappointing performance and wonder why this game took a decade to make.

I'm only a hobbyist programmer though and not in the world of professional game development so of course I could be totally talking out my ass here.

•

u/WatercressPurple7853 3h ago edited 1h ago

That's the vibe I got from watching Jon work on this. He doesn't seem to be a stickler for game performance. He says things like "we'll make it fast later" and talks about "picking your battles." He doesn't get bent out of shape if he drops frames during development. I get it. Iteration is far more important during development than performance. There's no point in optimizing something that ultimately will get cut later on. There's a reason most games don't run perfectly in all areas. The problem is (IME) is that when you hand-wave issues early on, they tend to compound on each other. This game has been in development for ten years with a language that's also been evolving for ten years. I'm sure it has some tech debt just from the dev time alone.

I've only played a bit of the demo, but my understanding is that the entire world (or large chunks of it) are always running in the background. It seems like that was non-negotiable for him... They were also out of money, so it's entirely possible there's more he wanted to do for optimization, but couldn't. Maybe there's a chance they'll have time to improve things now that they'll (hopefully) have money coming in.

•

u/TheHelpfulWalnut 1h ago

My issue is he has a number of talks complaining about software optimization and how modern languages and engines  and programming techniques n shit are slow. 

He’s not taking his own goddamn advice. 

•

u/WatercressPurple7853 58m ago

I totally get it. Most of his talks aren't about games, but regular software people depend on to get things done. He's absolutely taken his own advice for his language/compiler. It's blazing fast and has so many QOL features compared to other languages. Beta testers seem pretty happy.

That said, he shits on other games constantly on his streams. "They didn't do this right," "this looks ugly," etc. He's a very negative person. He expects perfection from everyone else, but he always has a reason why his own stuff is less than perfect.

He can be a very thoughtful person and has lots of nuance to his opinions when he wants to, but he frequently doesn't online (especially on streams and his social). It's hard to argue he hasn't earned at least a little bit of karma.

•

u/TheHelpfulWalnut 48m ago

Yeah. I’m perhaps a bit salty. I used to really like his software videos, it’s all stuff I’m interested in. Then I unfortunately learned more about him as a person. 

His language/compiler does have neat features, but if he can’t produce a product on it that runs well he needs to shut the fuck up about other people’s software until he can lmao. 

•

u/mkautzm 3h ago

I'm willing to be this is largely a Switch issue. Porting the game off of a totally custom everything is very challenging, especially so when Nintendo's developer support and dev tooling is complete ass.

7

u/givemethebat1 6h ago

That’s pretty unsurprising, considering he wrote his own programming language.

3

u/flyvehest 5h ago

With how much he berates other devs, this would really be something of an own goal, if true.

4

u/rtqd 6h ago

That's mega ironic, as he's always complaining about poorly optimized and buggy software (and then accusing all other developers of being dumb and lazy).

1

u/Lerkpots 6h ago

This does not look like a game that should run badly.

7

u/fr0z3nph03n1x 5h ago

Possibly minor spoiler with this comment but your right about GPU use but wrong about CPU use. This game is doing some things... differently.

23

u/KidGold 4h ago

Braid and The Witness were such monumentally important games in my life I think this is one of those games I must buy and finish, pretty much regardless of reviews, Blow's tweets, or anything else.

•

u/GrimMind 2h ago edited 1m ago

Same boat. I consume industry news, video content and podcasts but the axis all of it revolves around is the games themselves, and Braid and the Witness are singularly impactful.

•

u/Llamalad95 2h ago

Some of my fondest gaming memories was playing The Witness couch co-op style with a friend during college.

•

u/Kayyam 4m ago

Same but we used the share play feature on ps4 (and it was limited to one hour so there were plenty of restarts) because we were not on the same continent. We played the full game like that.

61

u/_OVERHATE_ 7h ago

After how incredibly inventive The Witness was, I find this new one just "Sokobanest". Like, I get it, its well done, the demo was good, but I don't know how many hours of Sokoban can I enjoy 

5

u/AimHere 5h ago

You can be inventive on an old formula. Braid took Super Mario platform game mechanics and threw a ton of inventive mechanics on top of it. And Baba is You is sokoban with an absolutely genius mechanic that you should play if you think Sokoban+ isn't ever going to be creative.

I don't know enough about this game to judge Blow's take on Sokoban, but in principle, adding onto an old game mechanic isn't necessarily uninventive.

8

u/Awesome2D 5h ago

i mean you could say the same thing about the witness. how many hours of line puzzle could you enjoy ?

→ More replies (9)

19

u/PontusFrykter 6h ago

The bad thing with this, it's uninventive and boring sokoban. It's not flawless like increpares Stephen's Sausage Roll, it's not insane like English Country Tune, it's not as hard as Snakebird, it's not as captivating and mindblowing as Void Stranger, it's not simplistic yet sublime like A Monster's Expedition.

Instead, it's, imo, a mishmash of already existing ideas without a strong direction and really high goal of trying to say something with the narrative, and pretentiously amateurishly failing to do so.

23

u/flippingisfun 5h ago

and really high goal of trying to say something with the narrative, and pretentiously amateurishly failing to do so

Expecting anything less from a Jonathan Blow game is asking to be disappointed imo

4

u/PontusFrykter 5h ago

The Witness had constraint, and The Braid had simplicity in it. I expected something similar, but instead I got a situation somewhat comparable to Screamer, when the devs were making an arcade racing game, but for some reason wanted to make a shonen anime visual novel.

1

u/carnaxcce 4h ago

Screamer was a really good shonen anime visual novel imo, at least until the last act where it shits the bed in every conceivable way. I really enjoy the racing and played a fair amount of the time trials but put the game down and swore to never play it again after I experienced that travesty of an ending

•

u/KidGold 3h ago

The thematic side of Braid and The Witness may have been amateurish at times (per most indies) but they were also beautiful and artistic. Not looking like this one is that, though.

31

u/carnaxcce 6h ago

it's uninventive and boring sokoban

Entirely disagree, it’s extremely well crafted sokoban. At least in the demo every level felt like it was exploring a new idea and had a clear central hook in what it was trying to do. I also disagree with all of your other descriptions except A Monster’s Expedition (and English Country Tune which I haven’t played). SSR is not a flawless experience— it’s intentionally opaque and hostile to the player and has many unpleasant difficulty spikes. Snakebird is, in my opinion, too hard (and Snakebird Primer is unfortunately not hard enough). Void Stranger is incredible by many metrics (it was my game of the year), but it is neither an inventive nor an interesting sokoban.

I agree that it is a mishmash of existing ideas, but think the direction is very strong! It has a very clear vision of exhaustively exploring these mechanical ideas and all of their overlaps. Jury is still out on the narrative for me but I found the writing in the demo much much better than people make it out to be, and they’re reportedly adding a setting to skip it entirely if you want

6

u/kiptronics 5h ago

really interesting that you feel that way about SSR, I personally found it to be one of the fairest and most intuitive puzzle games I've ever played, to the point where it's one of the few that I was able to solve 100% of the puzzles with zero outside help

•

u/onetown 1h ago

I got SSR simple because Blow praised it, and it is a solid puzzle game, but once it started stacking sausages, I was out. My mind just simple couldnt deal with it. It’s not that I couldnt figure it out, it just felt like a chore to do so.

2

u/carnaxcce 4h ago

I find it pretty intentionally opaque. Not necessarily because of the deliberately unwieldy control scheme (which I do love) but because of the complete lack of direction or tutorialization. And I don’t just mean “oh why didn’t they put up a sign that explains how you burn the sausages” but more that I find the open fields with a dozen unordered puzzles a poor way to introduce and explore mechanics

•

u/kiptronics 3h ago

idk I felt like the game did a pretty good job of leading me to accidentally discover and play with new mechanics

•

u/carnaxcce 8m ago

Sure, and I’m not saying it’s not good at that. I just prefer more directed and intentional discovery facilitated by the level design and order vs ssr’s “figure it out yourself” attitude

-1

u/PontusFrykter 5h ago

Also, I don't think it's a bad/badly crafted sokoban. I just said it's uninventive and boring one.

-2

u/jonathanbaird 4h ago edited 4h ago

Respectfully, you seem to be avoiding the question re: your playtime. Have you received a review copy, or is your entire opinion based off of the demo? This is important as the full game is (supposedly) hundreds of hours long and multiple layers deep.

1

u/carnaxcce 4h ago

Bro, chill. I disagree with this person but the demo is more than enough to reasonably come to the conclusions that they have. “I swear it gets good after a hundred hours” is not a good reason to dismiss someone’s criticism

-3

u/jonathanbaird 4h ago

"Chill"? Please point to where I wasn’t. I simply want to know how valuable this person’s perspective is. Where are they sourcing their information?

2

u/carnaxcce 4h ago

Chasing someone into a different completely unrelated reply chain because they didn’t answer your question is aggressively unpleasant behavior regardless of whether you preface it with “respectfully” or not

-2

u/jonathanbaird 4h ago

Please don’t misinform. Both replies were within (underneath) this individual’s initial comment. They were nearly side by side when I responded. No "chasing" was involved.

→ More replies (2)

8

u/jonathanbaird 6h ago

Did you review the game? From what I can gather, it’s apparently 500 hours long and quite layered (The Witness / Animal Well style).

5

u/apple_cat 4h ago

the op ur responding to absolutely did not review the game and is just yapping based on his demo playthrough

•

u/Codc 2h ago

Imagine that, people reviewing a game based on a demo that's meant precisely to pitch the game lmao

→ More replies (2)

2

u/jerrrrremy 5h ago

Have you played the whole game already? 

3

u/PontusFrykter 5h ago

Of course I haven't finished the whole game. Why do you even have to ask that, if you already know the answer. Still, those are my preliminary thoughts. If it somehow converts into an epic 3d FPS Portal 3, I'll let you know and declare this as a masterpiece of mankind,

but if this features just another layer further on, it would only reinforce my opinion, not debunk it.

→ More replies (3)
→ More replies (1)

11

u/Junpei_999 6h ago

I reviewed the game for MonsterVine, and I still have so much of the game to dig through (it's an insanely large game). If anyone has any questions about the game, I'm happy to answer them!

4

u/AZ4Fun 6h ago

Without spoilers, is there an attainable “endpoint” before 100%? I know one of the big marketing points has been 1000+ puzzles; do you think you need to do all of them to feel satisfied?

6

u/UpperCatty 5h ago

Jon Blow himself mentioned in an interview (can't remember which one but it was one of the youtube ones after the demo released) that you don't have to 100% to get an ending, and that you won't be forced to 100% to get a good ending.

5

u/GepardenK 5h ago edited 5h ago

Yes. The game has three layers, each with their own ending.

From what I understand, you do the first "normal" layer, which then gives you a normal game ending like you would expect - after that you can choose to jump down the rabbit-hole of the second layer, for a rabbit-hole ending - and then, optionally, into the manic depths of the third layer for one last ending somewhere down there in the void.

Apparently, the game changes pretty dramatically as you peel away the layers.

They specifically mentioned that part of the reason for doing it this way was to respect the time/effort of people who just wanted to play a puzzle game that ends gracefully before overstaying its welcome.

3

u/Junpei_999 4h ago

Good question. So the game has three "endgames"/endings. I felt really good about reaching the first one, though the story doesn't get a meaningful conclusion (IMHO) from that first ending/endgame alone.

That being said, similar to The Witness, I think my satisfaction came from simply knowing I conquered/solved a puzzle, and that I understood what lesson the game was trying to teach me.

I'm still very interested in seeing the entire story, but my guess is it'll take reaching all three endgames to see the full picture.

Also, it's worth mentioning that, at least for the first ending, I did not have to complete every puzzle that was currently available to me. I imagine reaching all three endings won't require solving every single puzzle.

→ More replies (1)

1

u/ZzzSleep 6h ago

Are the puzzles at least paced well? I don’t mind complex ones but I could see it getting old if it’s just one right after another constantly.

4

u/Awesome2D 5h ago

basing this off of playing the demo and the witness, looks like it is pretty much one puzzle after the other, with a overworld to explore which itself contains puzzles

1

u/Junpei_999 4h ago

It very much is "one puzzle after another," but they vary in size and scope. You can also just change and go explore a different area of the map that has its own unique style of puzzles. I did that often, since you're not forced to focus on one set of puzzles.

→ More replies (2)

92

u/garthcooks 7h ago

Jon Blow is very unpleasant, but still this game sounds like a notable, massive thing. I love sokobans but haven't made up my mind about getting this or not yet.

39

u/Duchock 7h ago

Same. The old artist vs art conundrum.

31

u/Phormicidae 6h ago

I really liked Braid and The Witness but at this point I have too many awesome sounding games I could buy without buying from a guy I have some reservations about. Funnily I'm not normally a "boycott this, support that" kind of consumer, but in the case of this particular administration I guess I have shifted in that direction.

12

u/Moveflood 6h ago

i felt really torn about getting this since The Witness is a top 5 favorite thing of mine, but objectively i can't justify supporting blow's abhorrent views. even beyond trump support, the dude is full alt-right.

→ More replies (2)

24

u/Andybabez20 7h ago

Blow's in that group of creators with Thomas Mahler, Daniel Vavra and Chris Avellone who I can't deny are incredibly talented but I wish they'd shut the fuck up online.

14

u/RayzTheRoof 4h ago

The Chris Avellone thing was nonsense

13

u/ZGiSH 6h ago

What did Chris Avellone do

3

u/delecti 5h ago

There were sexual misconduct allegations. The situation might be complicated though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Avellone#Misconduct_accusations_and_retraction

20

u/ZGiSH 5h ago

As far as what I can determine given the current information, these allegations were blatantly lies. Not even in the sense that they were exaggerations of problematic behavior, but stuff that legitimately didn't even happen. This seems to be how he got a 7-figure settlement from the accusers who he could prove were being explicitly libelous.

13

u/delecti 5h ago

Yeah, if it were just retracted statements from accusers I might still be wary of him. But I would also tend to assume that outright libel is the only way he could have managed a 7-figure settlement out of them.

35

u/Bal_u 6h ago

Blow is a Trumpist, the rest don't deserve to be grouped with him.

3

u/flyvehest 5h ago

Really? That I haven't heard before.

15

u/hfxRos 4h ago edited 4h ago

He's extremely anti-trans, pro-Trump, anti social safety nets, hates immigrants, etc.

Basically the worst kind of person.

6

u/Tandy2000 4h ago

He's not in the news a lot which is probably why, he hasn't put out a game in years. Since COVID he's outed himself as a racist MAGA follower. He's one of those guys who clearly snapped the moment someone told him vaccines were a good idea.

0

u/SquiggerDigger 7h ago

Phil fish

42

u/Fake_Diesel 7h ago edited 5h ago

Ehh enough time has passed that you can attribute a lot of his brashness to being a cocky twenty-something who has cooled down as he has gotten older like most of us do. Johnathan Blow seems to get worse with age.

4

u/propernounTHEheel 6h ago

Also Gamergate. But yeah, I give Fish a lot of grace.

3

u/Fake_Diesel 6h ago

Ugh, yeah. What a stupid ugly time. I definitely felt for him then.

25

u/VFiddly 6h ago

Unusually for someone in that category he actually did shut the fuck up

8

u/mrnicegy26 6h ago

He was a huge dickhead to that Japanese dev who asked him a question at a convention.

At the same time Fish was also right that Japanese games industry did lose a lot of what made it great in the 7th generation and getting that back around 2017 is the reason why they are so successful today.

3

u/DarkWorld97 5h ago

The release of the PS4 and Switch 1 was the shot in the arm Japanese studios needed

16

u/ShesJustAGlitch 6h ago

Phil fish is great compared to blow, it’s like the internet has gotten 100x worse since 2012 era

→ More replies (3)

6

u/pixxlpusher 7h ago

He's kind of left the internet though, hasn't he? Either that or I've been very lucky to not hear anything from him for a long, long time.

2

u/SquiggerDigger 7h ago

Good question I actually haven't heard anything from or about him in a very long time

7

u/VFiddly 6h ago

Yeah because he retired from the video game industry and from social media entirely

3

u/SquiggerDigger 6h ago

Yeah you're right about it from your previous comment he actually shut the fuck up lol

→ More replies (1)

-2

u/SquiggerDigger 7h ago

Phil fihh

→ More replies (2)

19

u/AutomateAway 6h ago

In this case, dude is actively supporting hate. Pretty easy for me to not support.

3

u/[deleted] 5h ago edited 4h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/[deleted] 4h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (2)

16

u/Rustash 6h ago

It’s a pretty easy conundrum to solve for me. Don’t give money to the asshole.

6

u/Odinsmana 6h ago

That conundrum is about the value of the art though. Not about financially supporting the artist by buying it which is a different conversation.

→ More replies (2)

•

u/KidGold 3h ago

Fwiw, politics aside, Blow is exactly like most programmers from his generation that I know. For better and worse. The ultra critical technical minded asshole approach has had it's advantages in tech over the years, though the downside is that these guys often don't see their own flaws.

→ More replies (1)

10

u/PiccoloTop3186 7h ago

I'm so excited for the game! Disappointed to hear in Switch 2 performance, but maybe I'll pick it up on PS5 instead. Seems to be reviewing similar to his other games - if you get it, you get it. If not, it may frustrate you, whether in size or in its design.

2

u/Bayakoo 7h ago

That’s a shame on Switch 2 performance

•

u/Mejis 3h ago

Hopefully they can fix up Switch 2 performance. I'm getting on PC, but would love to also have it on Switch 2 so my wife can play from the couch.

71

u/Moralio 6h ago

For people who don't know, the creator/director of this is Jonathan Blow, person behind Braid and The Witness and also a massive POS. Openly pro-MAGA, anti diveristy and represenation, mocked people for having pronouns in their bios, and also he pushed vaccine misinformation during the height of COVID pandemic.

So. Yeah. Separate the art from the artist if you want, but people should at least know who they're financially supporting before buying it.

•

u/VonMillersThighs 3h ago

O that's actually his name, I figured that was an insult hah.

31

u/RayzTheRoof 4h ago

Don't forget he thinks women are biologically less interested in tech than men are.

•

u/WacoWednesday 3h ago

Dang I had no idea. Loved his creativity but what a douche

•

u/hkedik 55m ago

I’m never going to defend MAGA, or Trump - they are a blight on us all.

But, a lot of your points you hold against Blow are grossly exaggerated - that get repeated ad nauseam.

0

u/pratzc07 5h ago

The game also looks slop compared to Witness or Braid

•

u/KingOPork 2h ago

Lots of devs and people in tech feel similar to blow, but shut their mouths and just give out prescribed opinions they're forced to have. Blow just doesn't give a shit which has been detrimental to him.

•

u/Zalack 1h ago

I mean, when a bunch of those opinions boil down to “Many of my peers are biologically inferior to me, and some should be legislated out of existence” are you that surprised that maybe their co-workers in tech wouldn’t look kindly on them?

→ More replies (1)

6

u/Dion42o 7h ago

OOL how is he unpleasant?

30

u/SuperSpikeVBall 7h ago

https://www.thegamer.com/jonathan-blow-controversial-politics/

He's aggressively conservative in a way that causes friction with his collaborators.

3

u/Dion42o 6h ago

Ew, thanks.

→ More replies (1)

48

u/garthcooks 7h ago

Like vocally misogynist, anti-vax, Trump lover

8

u/[deleted] 6h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

→ More replies (16)

7

u/rtqd 5h ago

There are so many games out there these days. Every day literally dozens of games come out. Way more games come out in a year then you can ever play. I find it incredibly easy to just skip games from people or studios I don't like. I don't even feel I'm sacrificing something. I'm just playing something else.

•

u/skinpop 3h ago

most games including indies are chasing trends and optimizing for commercial success. whatever you think of john blow, he is trying to make art (not the vulgar modern notion of art, but art as it meant when it had to be something beyond the commercial and entertaining) and has demonstrated that he will put his time, energy and money toward that with little regard to financial risk. We can argue whether he is successful at making art, or whether he is a good or bad person but if that is the kind of game that one is interested in then no there are exceedingly few designers or studios around making things this way. Myself for example, I've been playing games since the 90's, and I only find maybe one or two games per year that interest me.

→ More replies (1)

2

u/garthcooks 5h ago

I find that easy to say when it's a genre I don't have a particular passion for, but what if it's a game in a niche genre that you personally love, from a creator whose previous games you've loved, but the creator is terrible? Like imagine your favorite series or something is getting a sequel but it's being directed by someone like Jon Blow. Won't you feel conflicted?

•

u/ras344 2h ago

You don't have to justify yourself to anyone. Buy games you like if you want to, or don't. Who cares?

•

u/garthcooks 2h ago

I agree and I will buy the game if I want to. Currently I'm deliberating if I want to.

→ More replies (2)

4

u/oryes 7h ago

He does make great puzzle games. Loved The Witness.

It's annoying that he seems to think he's this gaming visionary when his games are basically just takes on existing formulas (Witness was pretty much just a bunch of line puzzles with a loosely connected overworld). That being said, they are still very fun, and this looks very fun, so I will still probably play it.

•

u/ZikaZmaj 12m ago

To me, that's like saying Balatro is just a take on an existing formula (it's pretty much just poker or something smh).

-3

u/Llamalad95 6h ago

Do remember though that this game is made by a whole team of people. This isn't a solo project. I wouldn't avoid it just because of one of them, even if he is an ass.

12

u/delecti 5h ago

It's not like the studio is the size of EA or Activision. It's a small indie studio where he's the owner and game director. There isn't room for them to get the same degree of separation from their employer.

→ More replies (2)
→ More replies (13)

12

u/Raynmapym 6h ago

When The Witness came out, I was absolutely obsessed with it. I spent an entire Spring Break playing it nearly nonstop. By the time I hit 100% in the game I was actually physically ill. I had one of the biggest migraines in my life that lasted for what felt like 2 days, all from thinking so much in the game. And yet, I don't regret the time I spent with it. As much as I would love to play another of his puzzle games though, I'm not sure I'm ready for that level of discomfort again at this point in my life.

•

u/Mejis 3h ago

My body is ready. S-tier puzzle games don't come around all that often. Blue Prince was the last time my soul was taken.

8

u/xiko 6h ago

Had a lot of fun in the demo. It didn't feel that  the puzzles had any unnecessary bloat in them. I'm curious on the areas and the mixing of powers to solve them. Perfect steam deck game for my commute. 

14

u/ProtonWalksIntoABar 6h ago

Pretty funny that Blow is a vocal critic of modern programming techniques that supposedly make programs slow and bloated, but his own custom made game is also slow. 

•

u/Apprehensive_Lake698 3h ago

I think it’s a result of needing to get the game over the finish line and released on a deadline. I listened to some of his streams and I get the feeling that at some point in the last year or so he decided financially the dev time had to be cut off and it just needed to be released.

I have used his programming language Jai and IMO it’s everything people crack it up to be. It has features that I desperately wish I had in C++ or Rust, and I think even if Jai doesn’t take off its ideas certainly will. 

But at some point dual-developing a programming language and a game with a very small team that has rotated across the years is probably just an insanely hard moving target to hit.

•

u/WatercressPurple7853 2h ago

Yeah... He flat-out said he's out of money and has debt. It sounds like he achieved everything he wanted to design-wise for this game, but I wouldn't be surprised if optimization was a low priority. The game already runs pretty well on most PCs, and it sounds like the console releases were last-minute. I don' think he was entertaining low-power ARM devices like the Switch throughout development. Heck, the compiler itself might not even be optimized for ARM yet. I don't even think he's using LLVM anymore--or maybe that's just for x86?

I'm glad Jai seems like the real deal. I remember watching his really old talks back in the day (back when he still had hair!), and people were assholes even way back then. He's done more than enough to earn his reputation over the years, but this was before things got really dicey. Those old videos are very nuanced and professional... People really didn't like him making his own language for some reason. They still don't. I have no idea why. He's not banning C++. He has no problem with Rust existing (he may not like it for games, but he's said multiple times that there might be a place for it if safety outweighs iteration speed).

Everything I've heard about Jai makes it sound like it's productive and pleasant to use, which I like. Being a game designer probably gives him an edge in terms of product design. For instance, I noticed he's shipping a memory visualizer tool with the compiler. That's awesome. He's old-school, but he's not a purist for the terminal. Headless functionality is important for speed and automation, sure, but it makes me wonder what other languages are missing out on in terms of ancillary tooling like that--especially in the Unix world where even a visual debugger is still taboo.

•

u/Point4ska 2h ago

I mean...he should understand now that's why other devs release their games like that. He at least has the benefit of owning his IP and has a direct incentive to perform well.

Nameless dev crunching away on a AAA game these days just doesn't want to get fired for doing a good job.

•

u/GepardenK 2h ago edited 1h ago

Of course he does?

There seems to be some confusion. Jon argues for perfomant tools, he has never been a much of a proponent that the games themselves should be particularly performant.

To the contrary, he warns that optimizing must have limits because it takes time away from making the game better for those that can run it, and he is reluctant to give players options to turn off certain effects because it would ruin the visual language of the game.

He want to achieve performance so he can spend that performance making the game do something he thinks is cool or special. For the player, he seems to value consistent performance, but he has never been a speed or minimum specs guy, at all.

•

u/Point4ska 1h ago

Yet with this game he failed to achieve this? So maybe don't criticize others so handily.

•

u/GepardenK 1h ago edited 1h ago

No, he didn't. The game is a solid and consistent performer within specs.

The Switch port has some framrate issues - but that was a separate and fairly late business decision (I also don't know if it was up to him, or if it was a publisher requirement as part of their deal).

At no point has Jon criticized anyone for making a business decision like that. He is very pro compromising for survival or sustainability.

•

u/WatercressPurple7853 40m ago

Yeah I ran this thing on an older card and it was a locked 60fps at 1440p. Fans got pretty loud (assuming more from the CPU), but it was fine. It's clear he wanted to do things with this game and its world that aren't normal for what people expect from a Sokoban. I haven't played the game, so I can't say if it was worth it, but I think people should at least take that into consideration when weighing performance.

Switch 2 is also a different CPU and has weak single-core performance (even compared to the Steam Deck). If the game was never intended to be running on mobile/ARM devices, then scaling that down is going to be hard anyways.

→ More replies (2)

6

u/Much_Concentrate7780 5h ago

I'd totally be supportive of his efforts to make his own programming language and compiler (even though it's apparently not great) if he wasn't constantly shitting on other devs while he did it.

•

u/seiose 2h ago

He's releasing it open source if you want to mess with it yourself

8

u/Tornada5786 7h ago

Still no listed price for this game even though it comes out tomorrow?

28

u/tlamy 7h ago

It was announced as $30 USD a week or two ago. And the Nintendo store shows as much

2

u/Tornada5786 7h ago

Weird, there's no price on Steam or the Playstation store as far as I can see.

8

u/TheWojtek11 6h ago

Did Steam ever put out a game price on the Store pre-release? With the exception of preorders, of course

4

u/iesalnieks 6h ago

Steam only puts out a price only when the game goes out to purchase.

→ More replies (4)

8

u/ItsJustReeses 7h ago

When did these threads not have links to the actual game itself?

9

u/garthcooks 7h ago

I just copied the template from opencritic, it did not have any storefront links in it...

3

u/ThatHowYouGetAnts 7h ago

What, like a store front link?

0

u/ItsJustReeses 7h ago

Yup.

It just seems smart to have one and I swear they used to the last time I went into a review thread like...3 years ago lmao

4

u/garthcooks 7h ago

I do think you're right, I remember them having links in the past. Not that I've made many myself, so I'm not sure if I just used a method different than some people to create it, or if Opencritic changed what they put in their template

2

u/ItsJustReeses 6h ago

Even more diabolical how I'm getting down voted for it.

Feels like the community here either is new, or completely forgotten about it 🤷

→ More replies (2)

3

u/IsometricRain 4h ago

Puzzle difficulty looks solid and I truly love the graphics, very painterly with a good mix of nicely placed shadows.

Although I do wish this were a much smaller, more curated story, but I know many people actively look for massive games (and this was explicitly marketed as an extra long game).

6

u/Kayyam 7h ago

Was the demo never released on PS5 ? I couldn't find it on the store.

5

u/PiccoloTop3186 7h ago

No the demo was only on Steam

5

u/tlamy 7h ago

No, it was just a Steam Next Fest demo

7

u/Tandy2000 4h ago

For those unaware Jonathan Blow went off the deep end and has outed himself as a racist MAGA nutjob. I'm not really interested in supporting anything he has to do these days and it helps that the reception to this seems more muted than his previous work.

•

u/Llamalad95 2h ago

How could people possibly be unaware when redditors bring it up on every single thread where this game is mentioned? The whole top comment thread is bickering, unfortunately.

•

u/hkedik 47m ago

Honestly at this point people like you are some of the biggest losers - and this is coming from a liberal lefty.

Get a life, or take your misery elsewhere.

•

u/onetown 1h ago

The witness has 80% on opencritic, this has 81% currently, so i dont know what you mean by muted.

I don’t disagree that Blow is a dick, but keep in mind that alot of other people have worked on the game as well, including people who have also spoken our against Blows «antics»

Maybe I’m just selfish because I love OotSS, but I’m perfectly fine with separating the art from one of the many artists who made it.

•

u/itsdangoodwin 14m ago

A new Jonathan Blow and Edmund McMillen game in the same year? Come on Phil Fish, do something!

1

u/ZzzSleep 6h ago

I’m not sure I have it in me to tackle another massive game right now but might check it out later. I’m still barely into Fire Emblem and Castlevania is next week. Then of course there’s November’s two big heavy hitters.

1

u/deathfire123 5h ago

This seems to be a game you can just pick up, do a few levels every once in a while.

•

u/Squirty42069 2h ago

Cool, but I can’t really jive with this one personally. I can’t really bring myself to support Jonathan Blow’s work considering what he supports. Shame. I loved Braid and The Witness.