Order of the Sinking Star Demo Walkthrough: How to Play It

Quick Answer

The demo is its own free Steam app, launched June 15, 2026 as part of Steam Next Fest and kept available after the festival ended. It received a content update on June 19, 2026 that Blow called Demo Part 2, adding two heroes, new puzzles, new areas, and the first content where the game’s worlds collide. Three worlds are playable: the North, the East, and the West, though the West is a single level rather than a full region, and the South is absent from the demo entirely. It is a carved-out slice of the full game, not a prologue, and this page gives you an orientation and a route rather than a list of puzzle solutions.

What the demo actually is

The demo is a standalone product on Steam, app 4597250, listed with type demo. It is free, it installs separately from the full game, and it does not require a purchase. As of a September 23, 2026 snapshot it held a 4.5 out of 5 rating across 1503 reviews.

It was launched for Steam Next Fest, which ran from June 15, and the festival version was originally scheduled to end on June 22. Thekla then announced that the demo would stay available longer, which is why it is still downloadable in September 2026 while the full game is still unreleased. It was extended twice: first to June 26 in a Steam news post, and then to July 31 in an official social post rather than a Steam news item.

It is still playable today. As of September 24, 2026 the demo store page is live with an Install button, it has reviews from the last 30 days, the full game’s Steam API entry still lists the demo as attached, and a creators.gg campaign that runs to September 27, 2026 points creators at it. What is not confirmed is how long it stays up after that: no official statement covers the demo’s availability through launch, so check the store page rather than assuming.

The demo supports nine languages: English plus German, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

Official source: Surprise! The Demo is Available Longer

The Part 1 to Part 2 update, and why it matters

The demo shipped in two phases, and this is the single most important thing to know before reading any playtime or puzzle-count figure about it. The original build and the updated build contained different amounts of content.

The June 19, 2026 update is documented in detail by Thekla. It added two new heroes, the Bard and the Druid, who unlock as you progress far enough: the Bard can charm others and move crystals while playing music, and the Druid accidentally transmutes his friends and objects in his path. It also added the first content in which the game’s worlds start to collide, which is the structural idea the full game is built around. The pre-update demo contained 75 puzzles, and the update took the demo past 100. The official launch FAQ had described the demo as containing “around 110 levels”, and the June 19 post said the update brought it to “over 100”. What actually shipped, and what players consistently count, is 105 puzzles with Phase 1 accounting for 75 of them and the developer has never corrected the published figure to match. It added new areas to explore and new lore to find, and the announcement teased that with the new content players would get “a chance to see what happens when the worlds start to collide”.

Official source: Demo Content Update Now Live

That teaser is the reason the demo matters beyond being a preview. The collision of worlds is the full game’s central structural idea, and the demo’s Part 2 build gives a first look at it. What exactly that look consists of is not spelled out, and no Gold Room pairing has been confirmed inside the demo.

[!warning] Do not measure the demo against a single number. Its puzzle count changed from 75 to the shipped 105 in a single update, and the official copy still says “around 110”, so any figure quoted without a source is describing a different version or a different claim. The current counts are covered on the demo length and puzzle count page.

Demo vs full game

Which worlds you can play

Three worlds are playable in the demo, and they are not the same size. The North, The Hearty Heroes of Hauling, is the demo’s largest region; the East, The Mirror Isles, is the second-largest; and the West, The Promise, appears as a single level rather than as a full region. That one level is a large gem-and-beam puzzle, and at least one reviewer describes it as the longest single puzzle in the demo.

The South, Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes, is not in the demo at all. That is settled rather than uncertain: IGN’s June 2026 preview, The Gaming Outsider’s demo review and the creators.gg demo campaign brief all state it independently, and the campaign brief asks creators to pick from “one of the three worlds that are available in the game”, naming the North, the East and the West. The audio log players report in a Promise area is real, but it sits inside the West’s single level rather than in a broader playable region.

Official source: Order of the Sinking Star Demo on Steam

For the full map structure, see the overworld map guide.

How the demo opens

The demo starts in the Overworld hub rather than in a cutscene, which matches Thekla’s stated approach to narrative: discovery-driven, with no passive cutscenes interrupting play. The Realm is the same hub that the full game opens in, so the demo’s first job is teaching you to read it.

One hands-on preview from the demo period reports that Blow suggested starting with the North or the East, describing that pair as the easier and more welcoming introduction. That is a suggestion rather than a rule, and the demo does not enforce an order.

The most useful opening habit is not to solve quickly but to notice what the map is doing. Puzzles are entered through tiles on the floor, and the overworld gates progress, so the demo teaches you its map grammar in the same way the full game does.

A practical route through the demo

This is a route, not a solution list. No published step-by-step walkthrough for the demo’s puzzles exists, and inventing one would be both wrong and against the point.

1. Start in the North if you want the gentlest on-ramp. The Heroes of Hauling teach object manipulation: pushing to clear lanes, pulling to move objects, and teleporting past blockades. The official guidance is to treat the party like a Swiss Army Knife, which means your first hours are about learning six tools rather than mastering one.
2. Cross to the East once pushing and pulling feel automatic. The Mirror Isles replace object manipulation with position swapping, and if you arrive with the North’s habits still forming, the two rule sets blur together. The Mirror Isles walkthrough covers the mechanic in depth.
3. Push each route until it stops teaching, then push a little further. The demo’s difficulty is front-loaded on understanding rather than on execution, and the moment a route stops introducing new ideas is usually the moment before it introduces the hardest one.
4. Save the late optional content for last. The demo’s most demanding puzzles sit behind abilities and areas you meet late, and several players report a pair of difficult mirror puzzles that only become reachable with a late power.
5. Expect to hit a wall and expect that to be normal. Multiple players report being stuck four or five times on the way through. Restarting a room costs nothing, and undo is unlimited.

[!tip] If you have been on one room for a while, change worlds rather than grinding. That is the same advice the beginner tips page gives for the full game, and it works in the demo because the demo inherits the open hub.

Where players get stuck

Player reports cluster around the Mirror Isles. One frequently cited puzzle is described by players as one of the toughest in the demo, and the hints that circulate for it are conceptual rather than positional: you need to be on two islands at once, the final island needs to be larger, and you cannot leave anyone behind. The other complaint that keeps resurfacing is the “75th (mirror) puzzle”, which sounds like a random mid-game spike but is not: Phase 1 contains exactly 75 puzzles, so that puzzle is the last gate of the original demo build, and players who stalled at 74 of 75 stalled at that same wall.

A separate pair of late mirror puzzles draws repeated complaints. Players describe one as a large multi-character map with a big puzzle grid and the other as involving a broken bridge and green crystals, and both are reported to sit behind a late ability that gates access. Players say both sit in “secret” areas reached through an amethyst, and a third complaint involves a mirror puzzle where a large gap has to be bridged using four crystals at once. The clearest player-written hint for the broken-bridge level is that a mirror needs to be pushed into a specific alignment rather than repositioned freely. The Promise’s single demo level has a community nickname of its own: the “dreaded gem area”.

Treat all of that as player-reported. The late mirror-puzzle reports come from a Steam discussion thread, and the “dreaded gem area” nickname appears in a separate thread where players also discuss the imported-save shortcut. None of it is official, and none of it is a solution. If you want to see how the community maps these areas, the demo map page explains the geography and the order areas open.

What this walkthrough deliberately does not do

It does not give you moves. The demo’s puzzle count is a matter of public record, but the solutions are not, and a wiki page that fabricates them would be less useful than one that explains the rules. What is published is the mechanic design and Thekla’s own strategy notes per world, which is what the four world walkthroughs cover.

It also does not tell you that you have finished. The demo’s endpoint is real but soft, and the question of how to be sure you have seen everything is common enough that it has its own page.

Related

• Demo map and area order
• Demo secrets and endpoint
• Demo length and puzzle count
• Does demo progress carry over?
• Gold Rooms explained