Order of the Sinking Star Demo Map: Areas and Order

Quick Answer

The demo covers the Overworld hub and three playable world routes, the North, the East, and the West, with the June 19, 2026 Part 2 update adding more areas on top. The West is a single level rather than a region, and the South is not in the demo at all. The demo has a fast travel map of its own. The order in which the later areas open is player-observed rather than published, and the demo is a carved-out slice of the full Realm, so its geography explains the shape of the full game without being a miniature of it.

What the demo map actually covers

The demo is officially described as a selected portion of the game that gives a meaningful slice of the over one thousand puzzles, and that is exactly what its map is: a portion. The hub is real, the three playable routes are real, and the boundaries are where the slice was cut.

Three worlds have playable content, though not at equal scale. The North, The Hearty Heroes of Hauling, and the East, The Mirror Isles, are the two full routes Thekla itself referenced when describing content that unlocks as you progress. The West, The Promise, is in the demo as a single level rather than a region, and reviewers describe that level as the demo’s longest single puzzle. The South, Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes, is not in the demo at all: IGN’s preview, The Gaming Outsider’s demo review, and the creators.gg campaign brief independently confirm it.

The demo also has its own fast travel map. Players report that this map already carries Overworld detail, including an audio log associated with The Promise area, which suggests the travel map is doing more world-building than a demo strictly needs to.

Official source: Demo Content Update Now Live

[!note] Thekla has not published a demo map image, an area list, or an area count. Everything below that is not marked official comes from players who mapped the demo themselves.

The order areas open

Order matters here because a raw map image cannot tell you sequence. The table below separates what Thekla has stated from what players observed. The first two world routes are not in a fixed order relative to each other, because both are available from the start.

Two cautions belong with that table. Stages 2, 3 and 4 are not a recommended sequence in the sense of a required one, they are simply the routes with playable content, and you can move between them freely. The South, Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes, has no row because it is not in the demo at all, which IGN, The Gaming Outsider and the creators.gg campaign brief each confirm. Stages 6 and 7 are player descriptions of the demo build at a point in time, and no official material confirms either of them.

[!warning] Treat stages 6 through 8 as reporting, not as a map legend. Players describing an area as a gold square or as a secret area are describing what they saw, and those descriptions have not been reconciled with anything Thekla has published about the full game’s Gold Rooms. Do not assume the demo’s gold-coloured zone is a Gold Room.

Why a map tool exists at all

The demo’s map is legible enough to walk and not legible enough to navigate precisely. Players wanted two things the game did not give them: proper level names, and a way to note which level they were currently on. That gap is why a community mapping project appeared within days of the demo’s release.

There is also a known accuracy caveat. A community wiki tracking the demo notes that region outlines appear slightly off in the demo build compared with the full map. That is consistent with the demo being a slice: parts of the surrounding map exist visually but not as playable space.

The community interactive map

An interactive map for Order of the Sinking Star exists as an open community project on GitHub under the name joric/ootss, published live through GitHub Pages. It describes itself as an interactive map with proper level names, and it also includes a PuzzleScript port of the game’s puzzles and a solution player.

Its value is coordinate-level: where a given level sits, what it is called, and how levels connect. Its limits are everything this page is about. A map tells you where things are. It does not tell you which areas open in what order, why the boundaries sit where they do, or what any of it means for the full game’s structure.

That is the division of labour. Use the tool for precision, and use this page for sequence and meaning. If you want to know how the demo’s slice relates to the four-cardinal-path structure of the released game, the overworld map guide covers that.

Official source: Order of the Sinking Star Interactive Map

How the demo map relates to the full Realm

The demo’s hub-and-spokes layout is a genuine preview of the full game’s structure rather than a demo-only arrangement. The four cardinal directions exist in the full map, the fog of war recedes as you progress there too, and the Gold Rooms later restructure all of it by making the worlds collide.

What the demo cannot show you is scale. The full game has more than one thousand puzzles and the four worlds amount to a small fraction of the intended experience, so the demo’s playable routes are a sample of the four, and the demo’s handful of late areas are a sample of the six dual-combination areas that the Gold Rooms unlock. The Gold Rooms page explains what that restructure actually does.

The demo also inherits the full game’s design choice not to force an order. The playable routes are open from the start, and you can switch between them at any point. If you want a suggested starting point rather than a required one, the demo walkthrough covers the practical route.

What the demo map does not tell you

• How many areas the demo contains in total. No official count exists, and player counts differ depending on how you split a region.
• Whether the demo’s late gated areas are story-critical, optional, or simply the hardest content in the slice.
• Whether any part of the demo corresponds to a full Gold Room. The Part 2 announcement teases that players can see the worlds begin to collide, and that is a tease rather than a specification.
• Where the demo’s slice sits inside the full Realm, and how much of the surrounding map is visible but not walkable.
• How the western region’s single playable demo level was chosen, and how much of The Promise it represents.

For the endpoint question specifically, including what the demo does and does not confirm, see the demo secrets page. For how long the demo runs and how many puzzles it contains, see the demo length and puzzle count page.

Related

• Demo walkthrough
• Demo secrets and endpoint
• Overworld map guide
• Gold Rooms explained
• Beginner tips