What is the 75th puzzle in the Order of the Sinking Star demo?

It is the last puzzle of the demo's original build: Thekla's June 19, 2026 update post states the demo held 75 puzzles before the update, so the puzzle players call the 75th (mirror) puzzle is the final gate of that first phase. Players report it took longer than the other 74 combined.

Is there a hint system in the Order of the Sinking Star demo?

No hint system had been announced as of September 24, 2026. The official material describes a discovery-driven design with no passive cutscenes, so the intended way through a wall is re-reading the board, leaving the room, or switching worlds rather than asking the game for the answer.

Does demo progress carry over if I take a break?

Yes, on Steam. Thekla states three separate times that progress made in the demo carries over to the launch version, so walking away from a wall costs you nothing. Saves do not carry between platforms.

Order of the Sinking Star Demo Hints for Stuck Players

Q: What hints do players give for the demo's hardest rooms?

For one Mirror Isles level players report three conceptual hints: you need to be on two islands at once, the final island needs to be larger, and you cannot leave anyone behind. For the two secret mirror levels behind the purple crystal, players report both are solved by the same operation with a mirror: move an object or monster down, then back up.

If you are stuck in the Order of the Sinking Star demo, you are almost certainly at one of three walls: the puzzle players call the 75th, which is the last gate of the demo’s original build; one of two secret mirror levels hidden behind a purple crystal; or The Promise’s single gem level, nicknamed the “dreaded gem area”. This page collects the hints players have actually posted for those rooms — what the level demands, not the moves themselves.

Quick Answer

The demo’s hardest wall, by player consensus, is the puzzle players call the 75th (mirror) puzzle, and it is not a random mid-game spike: Thekla’s June 19, 2026 update post states the demo held exactly 75 puzzles before the update, so that puzzle is the final gate of the original build. Past it, two secret mirror levels sit behind a purple crystal, and the community’s shared hint for both is one operation with a mirror — move an object or monster down, then back up. The demo has no hint system, undo is unlimited, and demo progress carries over to the full game on Steam, so stepping away from a wall costs nothing.

Official source: Demo Content Update Now Live

Why does the 75th puzzle stop so many players?

Because it is a phase boundary wearing the disguise of a normal room. Thekla’s Part 2 update post says the demo contained 75 puzzles before June 19, 2026, and the shipped build is counted at 105 puzzles with Phase 1 accounting for 75 of them — the figures players and press consistently reproduce, which the demo length and puzzle count page sets out in full. So the puzzle the community names the “75th (mirror) puzzle” is the last puzzle of the original demo build, and every player who stalled at 74 of 75 stalled at that same wall.

The player reports cluster tightly. One Reddit thread is titled outright that the 75th mirror puzzle was too hard, and its author reports that the puzzle “took more time than the rest 74 combined, including the promise,” specifically while talking to people who did all 75 puzzles completely hint-free and blind. A separate megathread has a player stuck at 74 of 75 who has “run around everywhere and just can’t” find the last one — a different failure, the puzzle existing rather than being solved, and a reminder that being stuck at the 75th can mean either problem.

[!note] Two kinds of stuck look identical from inside the game. If your counter reads 74 of 75, first confirm the 75th tile is even reachable from where you are — the demo map page covers the order areas open in — and only then treat it as a solving problem.

What hints do players give for the demo’s hardest rooms?

Everything in this table is player-reported or press-reported, nothing comes from Thekla, and none of it is a step-by-step solution. It is included because these are the walls that generate the same complaints in every thread, and the hints people trade for them describe what the level demands.

Wall	What players report	Hint players shared	Status
The 75th (mirror) puzzle	Took longer than the other 74 combined, including The Promise	No positional hint; the thread’s point is that it is doable blind and is simply the build’s hardest gate	Player-reported, Reddit thread
One Mirror Isles level	Widely called one of the toughest puzzles in the demo	“You need to be on two islands at once. The final island needs to be larger. You can’t leave anyone behind.”	Player-reported, quoted from demo discussion
Secret mirror level 1	Two characters and the largest puzzle map a player has seen	Solved by the same operation as the other secret level: move an object or monster down, then back up	Player-reported, Steam thread
Secret mirror level 2	A broken bridge and a couple of green crystals	The same down-then-back-up mirror operation; players add that a mirror must be pushed into a specific alignment rather than repositioned freely	Player-reported, same Steam thread, with screenshots
The four-crystal gap bridge	Player knows what to do but “can’t get the positioning right”	No hint posted beyond the complaint itself	Player-reported, single post, July 6
The Promise gem level	The demo’s longest single puzzle, nicknamed the “dreaded gem area”	None published; reviewers describe it as the longest single puzzle in the demo	Press and player-reported

The three hints for the Mirror Isles level are the most useful on the list, and they line up with what the developers describe about the realm. Being on two islands at once is the multiple-reflection layer, where several reflections move at once and one action rewrites the whole board. Not leaving anyone behind is the symmetry of a swap — something has to end up where you were standing, so a stranded character breaks the exchange. For the mechanics behind both, the Mirror Isles walkthrough and the mirror and reflection mechanic pages go deeper without giving away solutions.

[!tip] The single most transferable mirror rule from the official material: step back from a mirror to project your reflection farther. Distance from the glass is range, not proximity. A reflection that lands one tile short usually needs you to walk away from the mirror, not toward it.

How do you reach the two secret levels behind the purple crystal?

Players report that the demo’s last two mirror levels sit in two “secret” areas, and that reaching them requires using the purple crystal — a player writing in the walkthrough discussions calls the same object an amethyst. Both descriptions refer to the same gated route: a late ability or object opens areas that are on the map but unreachable before it. No official route has been published, Thekla has not listed the demo’s late areas, and the sequence in which they open is player-observed rather than documented, which is what the demo map page tracks.

The practical reading is that this gate is the same shape as every late gate in the demo: the area exists, you have not yet found the thing that opens it, and a blocked path is ambiguous between “finished” and “not yet keyed”. The demo secrets page works through that ambiguity at length, including how to tell the difference with the save counter.

What do players say about the broken bridge and green crystals?

The clearest hint to come out of that Steam thread is a shared one: both secret levels “are solved by the same operation with a mirror. You move an object or monster down and then back up.” Players back it with screenshots for each room — one showing the broken-bridge level where a crystal is stacked on another in water before the mirror is re-aligned, one showing the large-map level with two characters.

For the broken-bridge room specifically, the player-written hint circulating in the thread is that a mirror needs to be pushed into a specific alignment rather than repositioned freely — the difference between nudging it into place and picking it up and moving it. A third complaint from the same discussion involves a mirror puzzle where a huge gap has to be bridged using four crystals at once, and that one has no posted hint beyond a player reporting they know what to do and cannot get the positioning right.

[!warning] All of the above is player-reported from a single Steam thread and its screenshots, not official guidance, and “the same operation” describes the shape of the solution rather than the moves. Treat it as orientation. If you want the full picture of what the demo hides and when you are actually done, the demo secrets page and the demo walkthrough cover those questions.

What should you try before looking for any hint at all?

Three things, in order, and none of them spoil anything.

Use the undo. Press coverage of the game quotes the developers directly on this: “you can undo as many moves as you like.” There is no move limit to conserve and no cost to experimenting, so a plan you can state out loud is free to test and free to retract.
Leave the room, or leave the world. The Overworld is free-roam from the start and the demo inherits it, so a wall in one route is not a wall in the game. Changing worlds is the same advice the beginner tips page gives for the full game, and it works in the demo because the hub is shared.
Re-read the board instead of the room. Restate the win condition in one sentence, sort the tiles into movable, fixed and decorative, and ask which mechanic this board is reusing. That routine is the stuck puzzle checklist, and it catches more stalls than any external hint does.

No hint system had been announced as of September 24, 2026 — the official material describes discovery-driven design with no passive cutscenes, so re-reading the board is the intended answer, not a consolation prize. The audio design points the same way: music fades toward silence while you idle, which is the game making room for you to think rather than a failure state.

Does demo progress carry over if I step away?

Yes, and this is the fact that makes every hint on this page safe to take slowly. Thekla states it three separate times — the launch FAQ, the June 22 extension post, and the August 18 press release — that any progress made in the demo carries over to the full game on Steam.

Official source: Play The Demo Now! (official demo FAQ)

Two caveats players report: saves do not carry between platforms, and one thread describes the demo skipping you ahead to a north-east part of the map that would normally require a requirement to reach, which raises a question about whether that shortcut’s travel means survive the import. Both are covered on the carry-over page.

What this page deliberately does not include

No move-by-puzzle solutions. The hints above describe what a level demands — two islands at once, an alignment, an operation performed twice — because that is what exists in public from players and press, and fabricating a step-by-step would be worse than useless. The community map project on GitHub, joric/ootss, is where the level-by-level inventory lives, engine level names included, and the demo length and puzzle count page explains why the counts around these puzzles disagree in the first place.

If the wall you are actually facing is technical rather than logical — a crash, a freeze, a Deck problem — that is a fault rather than a puzzle, and the known demo faults have their own fixes.