20
votes
Order of the Sinking Star | Release date announcement
Link information
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- Title
- Release Date Announcement: Order of the Sinking Star
- Authors
- Jonathan Blow
- Duration
- 1:36
- Published
- Aug 18 2026
I want to play this game obviously, since Blow is a very good videogame designer. I'm conflicted on the morality of paying for it though. Maybe I'll get it from, uh, long distance friends.
Can you elaborate on what you mean? It doesn't say that he is financing any specific group. He just seems to have bad takes on politics. For example I found this video where he doesn't seem happy about either political party: https://youtu.be/-tdp2peI2gY. He is more of a naysayer. If we're going off random Tweets, he has this which is more recent than the Tweet sources in the Wikipedia article: https://xcancel.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/1939982295936782396
Anyway, I don't think we need to agree with everything an artist does or have some sort of purity contest. Jonathan Blow looks like a pretty complex person and summarizing his philosophy off random things that he says feels weird.
Also I think his art doesn't lean one way or another and generally helps with critical thinking.
Edit: This topic got me curious so I looked a bit more and found this video from 4 months ago, though I'm not sure when the interview was (edit looks like it was 2 years ago). Here's one quote that I found interesting (3:09):
There's this later in the video which is rather meta:
I wasn't going to respond since you come off as overly defensive, but apparently this is actually an exemplary take, so let's see.
OK. If this matters, where do you draw the line? Do I have to see his bank statements before I'm allowed to not want to support him financially?
What are you even talking about? There is no contest. I pointed out there are things he has said that make me uncomfortable with supporting him. I can only control my own actions, and I have a moral duty to try to make choices I think are right and to think inconvenient thoughts like how a famous videogame designer using his platform to say things that might convince even a small proportion of his audience not to vaccinate might compromise herd immunity and indirectly result in an increased number of deaths somewhere.
Can I live with that? I'll think about it. If you can, that's up to you, and no one implied otherwise. I'm not saying the man is Satan incarnate. He's a videogame designer who suffers from that problem where people who are really smart in a certain way sometimes overestimate themselves and neglect to think about the consequences of their actions.
And yes, he's the type who's "just asking questions". He frames these things as questions, and says these things about "talk," but he's not really having a real conversation, is he? He's soapboxing to a lot of followers while apparently (judging by the quote you edited in) "filtering out" any pushback.
If only he engaged with it himself
Jokes aside, as I've already said, I enjoy his games. I play a lot of puzzle games, I'm good at them. I'm not entirely sure I'd say they helped with my critical thinking, but they certainly exercise the brain. If I found Blow's videogame work repugnant I would not engage with it; I agree it's apolitical. But my reticence to contribute to his profit has nothing to do with any of that.
That's my bad I guess but it's because the same kind of discussions always spawns from posting something about Jonathan Blow online. And I wish the comments would be more about the game itself, not that it's bad. Reflects more on my thinking than on you. It's my pet peeve (The collapsed comment thread).
The reason I got exemplary wasn't because of the quality of my comment but because I took time to find videos and write the transcripts of the parts I found interesting.
I disagree that he is the type to just ask questions. He is really opinionated. snip1, snip2. He has a talk on Preventing the Collapse of Civilization. While I don't agree most of the time, I appreciate that there's a community reposting what he says with discussions from people agreeing with him or disagreeing. I see him as a modern day philosopher more than just a gamedev. But there's also a weird side where what he says gets amplified further than what he intended for example you can see his comment on this video"
With the uploader responding this:
Anyway, my comments tend to be dry and transactional I think. Don't read too much into it.
Edit: Oh I forgot to reply to this part:
His games tend to have many layers. For example, Braid is about saving the princess, but you can read deeper into it from many angles. Braid Deconstructed - A Retrospective
There are analyses for The Witness too. A Deconstructive Reading of Jonathan Blow and Thekla’s The Witness
I didn't care too much about The Witness but I liked other people's reactions to it. The Cracking the Cryptic playthrough was pretty awesome.
You know, you're right. I've been trying to be less negative about random stuff lately but sometimes I forget.
John Blow: ... all males currently under the age of 40 were raised to be supercucks.
He also was a Trump supporter when he was elected (best president ever). For me personally this closes the case. This does not look like "a pretty complex person", this is the rhethoric of a standard arsehole.
It's fine to separate the art from the artist when they are long dead and no one is profiting from the sales of their art anymore.
But financing Blow by buying his games means giving him more of a platform and potentially directly supporting right-wing politics, because I'd bet he's the kind of guy who makes substantial donations to his favourite political figures.
Nah.
You didn't really engage with what I said. I think I've shown above that he isn't necessarily a Trump lover, he was more of a Biden hater (which I can't really fault him for even though I do think he was a better candidate than Trump, but that's not saying much). The Tweet you linked to is also less recent than the one I linked where he calls the USA a banana republic under Trump. (Also can you use xcancel when you link to Twitter? That site sucks to browse without it.)
I don't advocate for separating the art from the artist. There are plenty of artists that I don't engage with their art. I don't think Jon Blow crosses that threshold based on what I've seen from him.
If you claim that he finances Republicans, you'll have to show proof because from what I can see, he spends all his money to develop his games.
Find me any community that respects his views on politics. From what I can see, no one likes his takes so I don't think there's really a platform there.
"best president ever, it's a miracle" sounds pretty Trump-loving to me. Also in the tweet you linked Blow calls the US a banana republic because of Trumps economic policies. That is the smallest problem I'd have with Trump. No, Blow seems to be completely fine with who Trump is as a person and what he stands for, and that tweet was from 2025.
That's all I need to know. I'm not interested in discussing whether it can be ok to support Trump in 2025, because yeah, no, it fucking can't, especially when said person uses terms like "supercuck" and rants against DEI policies. I wouldn't call that "bad takes on politics" either, Blow is quite obviously just another narcissistic MAGA arsehole, and downplaying this because he made two interesting games and is full of hot takes on programming is not an angle I'm interested in.
And of course he has a platform due to his devoted followers, the streaming audience and his self-made reputation as some kind of videogame auteur.
I don't think there is common ground to find here. Let's just agree to disagree.
Where does this "scared to speak my mind" horseshit come from? The only time I ever feel intimidated to speak my mind is when someone higher than me in the corporate totem pole gets enamored of an obviously dumb idea, and then the "fear" only drives me to rephrase my impulsive ridicule into something more politic (to mixed success).
If I get the feeling that what I think is not going to be received well, my first instinct is to ask myself, "is my thinking on this subject sound? Am I failing to see this from another perspective? Am I just full of shit?" It doesn't intimidate me, it drives me to examine my conceptions to see if I'm taking cognitive shortcuts. Those who piss and moan about cancellation just strike me as cognitively lazy assholes bitching that society expects them to put in mental effort before they fart out the first half-baked, malformed thought that flits through their minds. My reserves of tolerance for that bullshit are exhausted.
Isn't that just proving his point though? I think it's good to be able to express your ideas and get a reality check. It doesn't have to be a negative experience. Everything doesn't have to be a confrontation. Usually you do that in a safe space. Like there are things I've told my parents that once I've said it, I was glad it was said to them and not somewhere else. Then I changed my thinking. My parents are great people though but not everyone is as fortunate. Where do you go if you don't have an outlet? Or maybe I can call it a "social safety net". Is it not allowed to fail? Is there no recovery once you've failed publicly? That's how I read what he means by "develop a culture where people aren't afraid to talk".
Is all that progress only allowed to exist within our own minds and never be expressed externally?
Yes, and that's my point. I've yet to come up against a subject that couldn't be discussed provided I took the time and effort to develop cogent, well-reasoned things to say about it. My suspicion is that people who complain about this stuff like it's ubiquitous just can't be assed to put in that effort. It's not surprising to me that Twitter seems to be the epicenter of this, since the whole platform encourages knee-jerk emotional responses and nothing else.
I agree with you there. I'm not sure I have such a generous reading of Blow's opinions as you do, and I think that's essentially the difference here.
God damnit, I was blissful unaware until now that he went MAGA.
I understand your reservations due to his political beliefs, but I have some questions:
While he's the figurehead of the team, he doesn't work alone. Do you know the opinions of every person who worked on this game? Would it make it better if they were firm leftists?
At what ratio of right/left people does it become unacceptable to support a team's project, or is it just the studio head that matters?
On a wider scale, do you vet every creator before buying something they made? What about artists who aren't as outspoken, do you err on the side of caution or buy it anyway?
Personally, I think we do a disservice if we write off someone's life work because they have a bad take, it should be taken in context. People still read H.P. Lovecraft even though it was well known at the time he was an awful racist and we don't strive to create a world he'd agree with, but that doesn't mean his art is worthless.
I disagree with his politics, but I don't get the impression he's a die-hard MAGA and I think the work he and his team create is interesting and different enough that I want to see more of it.
Jonathan Blow (Braid, The Witness) has been working on this game for a few years now. It's a sokoban game. I used to follow his development streams a few years ago. The tech for this game was really interesting. It's using his Jai language.
Edit: The date is October 8, 2026.
He's been working on it for 10 years.
I played the demo during Steam Next Fest, and it's incredibly good. The blending of different puzzle elements creates some very novel and surprising gameplay.
It also seems quite challenging. I'm expecting that, much like The Witness, immersing myself into this game will colour how I see shapes and symbols for weeks to come.
Played the demo it's an epic game if you are into puzzles. There's suppose to be hundreds of levels. On top of it all its written in Jai the language JB is making and the entire game compiles under 2 seconds. How many games can you say do that?
I won't be surprised to see comments criticizing John's politics or beliefs. I'm here to say I could not care less. I don't follow politics and while its rational to not support people who doesn't share your most fundamental beliefs, I just don't look at a game or programming language as core extensions of developer's value system. If its a fun and great puzzle game and it doesn't go out of its way to force me to a certain belief or value, then I'll enjoy it.
I care about accessibility in gaming for myself, others I know, and the general populace. Regardless of political connotations, that's going to affect my interest level, and he's demonstrated enough in past works to show me he doesn't want my business.
Looking at the rest of this thread so far, its clear that some people feel strongly enough in the other direction that they need to justify their hobby to those that disagree, enough to get confrontational about it instead of agreeing to disagree or moving on. Didn't know this specific developer created such reactions, and for that I'm thankful that the thread is properly tagged so I don't stumble into unexpected drama as often moving forward.