Spoiler warning: this guide may discuss puzzles and story details. Hints stay hidden until you choose to reveal them.
This is Part 0 of GameClue's seven-part Order of the Sinking Star walkthrough. It covers the opening tutorial, what to do at the Crossroads, a soft-spoiler recommended route through the four surface worlds, and habits that keep a 1,000-puzzle game from locking you into one stuck room. Later parts walk North (Part 1), East (Part 2), South (Part 3), West (Part 4), then Gold Rooms (Part 5), then Antipode endings (Part 6).
Series roadmap
- Part 0 (this guide): tutorial, Crossroads, recommended early order, unstuck habits
- Part 1: North - The Hearty Heroes of Hauling
- Part 2: East - The Mirror Isles
- Part 3: South - Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes
- Part 4: West - Vault of the Beamcasters
- Part 5: Gold Rooms and surface crossover areas
- Part 6: Antipode through High / Low ending routes
The four starting campaigns are not gated in a fixed unlock order. Guides and hubs such as GameRant's walkthrough index and Polygon's Crossroads advice treat North to East to South to West as a difficulty-friendly suggestion, not a hard requirement.
Finish the tutorial first
The short opening stretch is worth finishing before you plan a route. Multiple walkthrough hubs note that it introduces pushing rocks, running, slowing time, undoing moves, restarting a room, and unlocking cages, plus a little early lore. Practice undo and restart while layouts are still small; both tools stay central once rooms get experimental.
Arrive at the Crossroads
After the tutorial you land in the Crossroads hub. Grab the overworld map as soon as you can, then listen to the recording near the center. Polygon reports that the recording steers newcomers toward north or east and away from west. From the menu you can exit back to the overworld whenever you want, so choosing a direction is never permanent.
Which direction should you take first?
You can go north, east, south, or west immediately. Soft consensus across Polygon, GameRant's Crossroads section, and beginner progress pages is the same: start with the gentler openings, save the densest western vault for later, and leave a stuck board instead of grinding one room for hours.
The four worlds at a glance
- North - The Hearty Heroes of Hauling: swap among heroes with different push, pull, stack, and teleport-style object tools (inspired by Heroes of Sokoban).
- East - The Mirror Isles: reposition mirrors and teleport between reflections; complexity rises as more mirrors share a board.
- South - Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes: push stones across water, use lily pads and currents, and time steps onto drifting pads.
- West - Vault of the Beamcasters: place gems to power colored beams that grant temporary abilities, then explore a winding gem-gated space (demo-era name: The Promise).
On PC, southern timing puzzles benefit from holding Ctrl to slow time and Alt to speed through waits; a lily pad often pauses briefly before it drifts, which is a common boarding window. In the west, if a gem or emitter leaves a room in a bad state, undo past the mistake or reset the room rather than forcing a soft-locked layout.
Habits that keep you moving
- Walk the whole room before moving anything. Note exits, movable objects, mirrors, gems, and hazards.
- Look for the one new rule the board is teaching instead of inventing a hidden system.
- Undo early and often. Holding undo rewinds many moves; mistakes are free.
- Reset a room when an experiment collapses. If reset lands you in a weird mid-state after a patch, hold undo back to the true start, then reset again.
- Leave a stuck puzzle and change worlds from the Crossroads. Opening new areas usually beats camping one room.
- Keep short notes on unfinished boards so you recognize them when you return.
What opens later (soft spoilers)
You do not need late-game detail in Part 0. Still, it helps to know the surface is larger than the four first campaigns: seams between worlds eventually open Gold Rooms and mixed-rule areas, and a deeper hub becomes relevant after those teleporters. Part 5 and Part 6 of this series cover that layer explicitly.
What's next
Part 1 starts the North campaign in The Hearty Heroes of Hauling: how the early hero roster works, how to navigate the northern screens, and spoiler-gated solutions for the first boards. If mirrors already sound more interesting than hauling, you can jump to Part 2 (East) instead and still return here for Crossroads habits.
Primary soft-spoiler route advice for this part comes from Polygon's Crossroads guide, cross-checked against GameRant's walkthrough hub, sinkingstarwalkthrough progress notes, and WikiTactics rules pages for mechanic wording.
