Order of the Sinking Star sold 45% more units on Steam in its first week than The Witness did, according to first-week figures published in a Steam announcement from Thekla and Arc Games. The update was posted to the game’s Steam community page on October 16, 2026 under the title "A Thank You from Thekla, Inc. & Arc Games."
Launch Details and Platform Availability
Order of the Sinking Star is a puzzle game from Thekla, Inc., directed by Jonathan Blow, the creator of Braid and The Witness. Thekla, Inc. developed the game and Arc Games published it. The game features more than 1,000 handcrafted, interconnected puzzles across four worlds. It launched on October 8, 2026 after roughly a decade in development since The Witness released in 2016. The game became available on PC via Steam and Steam Deck, where it carries Steam Deck Verified status, on Nintendo Switch 2, and on PlayStation 5, with October 9 availability in some parts of the world. It is also available through NVIDIA GeForce NOW and costs $29.99.
In the same announcement, Thekla wrote that 10 years ago there was an ambitious idea for this "game design supercollider," a design that combines ideas from multiple puzzle game designers.
First-Week Milestones by Platform
The first-week performance data covers Steam, Nintendo eShop, and PlayStation Store. The announcement reported an Overwhelmingly Positive Steam review rating with more than 2,000 reviews. Player concurrency on Steam exceeded The Witness’ peak concurrent player count by 33%. On Steam, Order of the Sinking Star reached the Top 5 of the Popular New Releases list and the Top 10 of the Top Sellers list for single-player games, and it was featured in the Featured & Recommended carousel. On Nintendo eShop, the game placed in the Top 15 best sellers list, and on PlayStation Store it appeared in the What’s Hot section. The developers also thanked press and content creators for glowing reviews and Twitch streamers for hosting streams of the game during its first week. The sales comparison covers first-week Steam units, and the concurrent player comparison covers the highest simultaneous Steam player count for each game.
| Metric | Detail |
|---|---|
| Steam review rating | Overwhelmingly Positive with over 2,000 reviews |
| Sales vs The Witness (first week) | 45% more units on Steam |
| Peak concurrent players vs The Witness | 33% higher on Steam |
| Steam placement | Top 5 in Popular New Releases, Top 10 in Top Sellers for single-player games, Featured & Recommended carousel |
| Nintendo eShop | Top 15 best sellers list |
| PlayStation Store | What’s Hot section |
Post-Launch Patches and Localization
Thekla and Arc Games wrote that they have seen player feedback in their Discord and across other social channels about bugs that should be fixed and level tweaks that should be made, and they are issuing patches to address these as quickly as possible. The developers are continuing to improve performance across all platforms and finalize localization. They plan to add Chinese voice-over narration soon. The announcement also states that the developers are working on bringing the Japanese version of the game to consoles.
