Thekla builds 1,500-puzzle indie game over decade

Thekla built Order of the Sinking Star over more than 10 years, with around 1,500 puzzles, GamesBeat said in an X post on Oct. 14.

The project matters because GamesBeat said roughly 10 people made it with a custom engine and a new programming language, an approach far outside faster, tool-driven commercial production.

GamesBeat said Thekla, led by Jonathan Blow, later brought in publisher Arc Games to help complete the game. The post did not give a release date, budget or publishing terms.

Blow, Thekla’s founder and the creator of Braid and The Witness, framed the project as an argument for originality over speed. “I never wanted to do stuff if other people were going to do it. I always wanted to be doing the things that nobody would do if I didn’t do them,” Blow said, according to GamesBeat.

For the indie games market, the disclosed scale cuts both ways. A 1,500-puzzle design suggests unusual content depth for a small studio, while a decade-long build and bespoke technology point to the cost and execution risk of keeping creative control in-house.

The source material is a GamesBeat social post promoting a full interview, so several business details remain unreported, including the financing burden before Arc Games joined and how the publisher’s role changes the path to launch.