Jonathan Blow is one of gaming’s most creative minds. He has made two of the more iconic, creative, and a little difficult puzzle games over the last two decades with Braid and The Witness. Now, his third game, Order of the Sinking Star, is on the horizon and it is shaping up to be just as creative and puzzle filled as his last games were. At Summer Game Fest, we got to go hands on with the game  and, while we only played the early sections of the game, you could already see the creativity seeping through the screen.

Order of the Sinking Star is a puzzle game that is set to have over 1,000 puzzles all around the world of the game. The demo we play was basically the beginning of the game so we never got into anything too complex. However, we still got a gist of how the game works. After exiting the intro area we were straight into the world and could choose a cardinal direction to explore which would have different types of puzzles to complete. We also got to see a brief glimpse of the map which is covered in fog and revealed piece by piece as you explore.

Going north, which the game recommends to start with, we could transport to a puzzle area with three different characters. Each puzzle was the same, but how the characters interacted with the puzzles were different. The Barbarian could push rocks around to get through easily. The Thief would automatically pull rocks if they walked near it, and the Wizard could trade spots with a rock if he had direct line of sight with it. It gave a layer of creativity to the same repeating puzzles to get different results.

Going East, these puzzles were all about mirrors. You have to push a mirror around to be able to warp through to your reflection to maneuver around little islands. These got a tad more complex as more mirrors were added as we progressed. We didn’t see what was South or West, but were told they had harder types of puzzles at the start. Speaking of difficulty, the game features a rewind function so it is very easy to take back moves, and you can easily restart an entire level at the press of a button. You can even rewind out of a restart if you don’t want to commit to restarting a level.

Overall, Order of the Sinking Star looks to be another fantastic puzzle game from one of the most creative puzzle designers. Order of the Sinking Star is set to release at some point later this year.