Jonathan Blow, the indie game legend behind Braid and The Witness, is back this year with Order of the Sinking Star. We got the chance to speak with Blow ahead of the reveal that his new puzzler is heading to Nintendo Switch 2 as well as PC when it launches later in 2026.
While speaking about all the new elements of his next game, Blow touched upon the fact he'd never done a sequel before. We asked whether this was something purposeful, or whether it was a pattern he'd accidentally fallen into. He explained that in the late 2000s, when he first started making and releasing games, the industry was dominated by big AAA franchises and sequels.
"When you looked around at that time you definitely saw as you still see this commercial mechanism that likes to produce sequels and sequels to sequels. So there's that aspect which is just I wanted to be creative I didn't want to do this other thing," Blow explained. After Braid's success, he knew the temptation would be to make a sequel, but he struggled to come up with ideas for more content.
That changed with the Braid Anniversary Edition, but Blow found moving to a new project was more compelling. "With The Witness it was the same thing. I just felt like well we we sort of did everything that I want to do here and I don't know what a good sequel would be like," he continued. "Obviously with The Witness you could do The Witness 2 ... but the excitement of the game was the newness of the idea and you can't do that in a sequel because it's not new anymore."
If there was any game that Blow sees potential in a sequel for, it's Order of the Sinking Star. "[Order of the Sinking Star] is the game that I actually think could have the greatest sequel potential because you could do different worlds coming together with different mechanics and it would be pretty fresh. However, I'm not sure I want do that. I mean never say never but it was just so much work to get here where we are now," Blow said.
It seems like if a sequel is ever compelling enough to Jonathan Blow, he'll come back to it. Like with a lot of creatives, though, it seems the newer idea is always the shinier one, and because of that we get incredibly refreshing experiences from him each time, from Braid to The Witness to Order of the Sinking Star. Check out our full interview here for more from Blow.