Order Of The Sinking Star Sometimes Has Too Much Of A Great Thing

A good puzzle game needs to constantly find new ways to challenge you, to walk you through skills and reward your observations, and to contain answers that make logical sense without being too obvious, or too obtuse. Order of the Sinking Star, the latest puzzler from developer Thekla Interactive and director Jonathan Blow, mostly hits those marks with impressive, cunning, and devious puzzle design. But even when it misses and gets frustrating, the game takes so many swings that it's easy to head to another level and find another opportunity to bend your brain and stretch your smarts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMaW-V42Xwg In fact, the best and worst part of Order of the Sinking Star is how expansive it is. Thekla touts over 1,000 puzzles to solve spread across an expansive overworld map that's full of discreet dungeon-like levels, mimicking the formula of 1987's The Legend of Zelda. And like the original Zelda, all of those puzzles involve pushing blocks around a grid, seen from a top-down perspective. Finding ways to keep the act of pushing blocks challenging, compelling, and unpredictable for hundreds of puzzles is Sinking Star's greatest feat, but that ingenuity can also m…