Jonathan Blow On Why He Waits A Decade Between Games
Blow's three commercial releases in roughly two decades, and his refusal to follow Braid or The Witness with a sequel, describe a working method that the current game business rarely accommodates.
Reporting from 1 source: 4Gamer.net.
At ChinaJoy 2026, Jonathan Blow discussed his approach to game development and why he does not build sequels. His next game, Order of the Sinking Star, was announced at The Game Awards on December 11, 2025 and is due October 8, 2026 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, and Nintendo Switch. He also said its story is larger than those of Braid and The Witness.
Order of the Sinking Star is a top-down game built on Sokoban-style block pushing, with four puzzle mechanics that combine as the player progresses. Blow said it has more than 1000 puzzles and takes about 250 hours for a normal clear, or over 500 hours to solve everything.
The gap since The Witness has a cause he names himself: he was building the Jai programming language at the same time. He started it during The Witness out of dissatisfaction with C++, and Order of the Sinking Star runs on an in-house engine written in Jai. Jai has been in development since 2014 and has not been released to the public.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.