Order of the Sinking Star Controls and Undo, Explained

Order of the Sinking Star is played with a deliberately small control set. One input moves a hero exactly one square on the grid, one button swaps you to another character, and one button rewinds — one action per press, holdable for a continuous rewind, with no cap on how many moves you can take back. A separate button restarts the puzzle on the spot. The game accepts keyboard and mouse or a controller, and the whole design is built around you making cheap mistakes on purpose.

Quick Answer

Movement is one grid square per input, and everything else is a single button: swap characters, rewind one action at a time (unlimited and holdable), restart the puzzle instantly, and slow down or speed up time. Keyboard and mouse and controllers are both supported on PC, the console versions play with their bundled controllers, and Steam lists full controller support including DualShock and DualSense.

[!tip] Undo is not a resource in this game. Nothing in the official material or the launch reviews describes a counter, a cost or a limit on rewinds, so treat every move as reversible and experiment freely.

Which inputs does Order of the Sinking Star support?

Keyboard and mouse or controller, whichever you prefer — that is the official wording. The FAQ published with the public demo answers the question directly: “The demo does have controller/gamepad support! That said, it can be played on mouse and keyboard or controller/gamepad – whichever you prefer.” The full game carries the same posture forward, and Steam’s structured feature data for the store page lists full controller support alongside DualShock 4 and DualSense support.

Official source: Play The Demo Now! — official demo FAQ

The game launched on October 8, 2026 on PC via Steam and Steam Deck, Nintendo Switch 2 and PlayStation 5, and the launch announcement also names NVIDIA GeForce NOW as a way to stream it. One week before launch the team announced Steam Deck Verified status with the quote “plug in and play, no tweaks required”, which in Valve’s framework covers controller behaviour and default configuration, not just performance.

Official source: Order of the Sinking Star on Steam

How does movement work on the grid?

One input equals one square. The game is played from a top-down view on a discrete grid, and GameSpot’s launch review describes every puzzle as pushing blocks around a grid seen from a top-down perspective. A hands-on preview published before launch puts it the same way: players control each character from a semi-overhead view, essentially moving along a grid. Steam’s store tags agree, carrying both Sokoban and Grid-Based Movement alongside Controller.

Because movement is discrete rather than analog, every board has a countable before and after. A step is either committed or it is not, which is exactly what makes the rewind button predictable: it has a clear unit to work in. This is also why reading the board matters more than execution speed — the transferable skill lives on the how to read a puzzle grid page, which covers sorting movable tiles from fixed ones before you touch anything.

How does the undo button work?

Press it and time steps back one action; hold it and the rewinds keep coming. There is no limit on how many you use. GameSpot’s review spells out the unit: “An instant undo button dials you back one action, and an action includes moving a character by one grid square.” GamingTrend’s review adds the holding behaviour: “A simple button input rewinds time one move and can be held as long as you want to rewind over and over.”

Jonathan Blow himself addressed the limit question in a December 2025 interview, in the context of characters who act on their own: the rogue will always pull an object beside her, which might inadvertently trap you, but “don’t worry, you can undo as many moves as you like to get back on track.” That is the important part. Automatic character abilities can make moves you never asked for, and the rewind covers those too, because they are just actions like any other.

Three practical consequences follow:

1. Mistakes are information. Shoving a crate off a cliff or trapping yourself in a corner costs one button press to reverse, not a level restart.
2. Auto-abilities are testable. If you are unsure what a hero does when placed next to an object, position them and rewind. The board tells you the answer and you take it back.
3. Undo replaces most restarting. Since the rewind works backwards through your real move history, a room you have nearly solved never has to be cleared from zero.

What is the difference between undo and restart?

Both exist, and they answer different situations. GameSpot confirms the second tool: “There’s also a dedicated button for instantly restarting a puzzle with no loading.” Shacknews describes the persistence that sits between them — puzzles remember the exact configuration you leave them in, and each one remembers the steps you took to get there, so you can use the rewind function instead of completely restarting when you feel close to a solve.

The spoiler-light stuck puzzle checklist puts the same rule as advice: if you must experiment, restart the puzzle first so the experiment is clean. Undo is for walking a single idea back; restart is for changing the question. If you would rather leave the room entirely, remember that the Overworld is open from the first minute — the beginner tips page covers the retreat loop.

How do you switch characters?

With a press of a button. Shacknews’s launch review describes it directly: with a press of a button, you can swap between characters and use their unique mechanic to aid another, and some of the later puzzles necessitated repeatedly swapping back and forth to reposition objects between them. The northern world is where this bites hardest — it stars a party of six heroes, a fantasy moving company whose members official material names as Warrior, Thief, Wizard, Bard, Cleric and Druid.

Two details make the swap more than a menu flip:

• Heroes act on their own. Characters will always use their abilities when the situation allows, so who is standing next to what is part of the puzzle. The Heroes of Hauling walkthrough and the push, pull and teleport abilities page break down what that means room by room.
• The switch is audible. The audio team has said each playable character has its own signature sound that plays when you switch to that character and occasionally when they move — the Queen’s armour clinks, the Thief’s beads rattle — so the game confirms your swap without you watching the portrait.

Players report that the demo used fixed number-key bindings for the party, one key per hero, kept the same across levels deliberately for the crossovers to come. That comes from a community project that reverse-mapped the demo build, so treat it as a player report rather than documented official defaults; the in-game settings are the source of truth on your machine.

What do the slow-motion and speed-up controls do?

They exist for timing puzzles, and reviewers describe them as dedicated buttons alongside the rewind. Shacknews reports a button that slows down time when a puzzle needs precise repositioning, another that speeds time up — useful when you are waiting for an item to loop, like a lily pad on a circular stream — and the one that rewinds your moves one step at a time. GameSpot’s phrasing is the same: you can slow down and speed up time at a whim, making tricky timing easier to finish or skipping the wait when nothing is happening.

[!note] These are pace controls, not difficulty settings. They let you line up a fast move or skip a slow loop; they do not change what the puzzle is asking of you.

Together with the rewind button they explain one of Steam’s more unusual store tags: the game is listed under Time Manipulation next to Controller and Grid-Based Movement. And the safety net underneath all of it is that, per GamingTrend’s review, there are no real fail states, no time limits and no soft-lock opportunities in the game — you cannot lose a room by playing it.

Can you remap the controls?

Neither the store page nor the official news posts publish a full default binding chart, so the in-game settings menu is the only authoritative list for your machine. The community-maintained PCGamingWiki entry for the game does document the configuration screen, and reports the following for the PC version: keyboard remapping has native support, keyboard and mouse prompts are shown, and controller remapping is available but limited — the left stick, right stick and D-pad buttons are protected from being rebound. The same page lists controller hot-plugging and simultaneous controller plus keyboard and mouse as supported, and mouse input in menus as having no native support. Those are community-maintained observations, not official documentation, so expect them to lag patches.

[!warning] On the console versions and Steam Deck, remapping happens at the system level or in the game’s own settings screen — there is no published console binding list to check in advance. Valve’s Deck Verified announcement covers default configuration as part of its verification, which is why the handheld works without tweaks.

Related

• How to read a puzzle grid — the tile-reading skill that makes careful moves possible
• Heroes of Hauling walkthrough — the six-hero party where switching matters most
• Push, pull and teleport abilities — what each hero’s verb actually does
• Stuck puzzle checklist — when to undo, when to restart, when to leave
• Beginner tips: your first hour — how the grid and the Overworld introduce themselves
• Demo walkthrough — where players first meet these controls

This page documents the controls as described by official material and reviews published around the October 8, 2026 launch. If a patch changes the default bindings, the remapping section is the first place to re-check.