A game full of handcrafted puzzles.
Thekla is known for doing slow, careful work, and Prequel: The Fallen Star follows the same path.
Every puzzle is hand-crafted. Nothing's procedurally generated. Some puzzles are small and subdued. Others sprawl across broad areas and push the rules in surprising directions. You can walk around freely, back to old areas when you want, and try things again whenever you feel like it. The result feels open and relaxed; there's no pressure to hurry.
A Mix of Ideas From Several Puzzle Creators
It brings together many designers with strong puzzle backgrounds:- Alan Hazelden (Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes, Mirror Isles)
- Sean Barrett (Promesst 1–3)
- Jonah Ostroff (Heroes of Sokoban)
- Zach Polansky (Enigmash)
- Patrick Traynor (Patrick’s Parabox)
Their previous games inspired four major “worlds” within The Fallen Star.
Each world has its rules and characters. Moving between them causes the rules to mix. New interactions, new puzzle styles emerge. It feels playful, sometimes a bit wild, yet controlled in such a nice way.A world built upon a new kind of engine
To support all these systems, Thekla designed a new game engine from scratch.
The engine is written in a programming language developed by the studio itself. It replaces many of the tools they used on previous projects. This new foundation lets the team build puzzles that interact in more complex ways without breaking the game.
A long and focused development
The project started after the 2016 release of The Witness.
The concept was straightforward: to put a number of robust puzzle mechanics together and allow them to interact within a single world. This concept drove the whole development process. First 5% of content came from exploring the mechanics of earlier puzzle games; the rest grew organically when those mechanics collided and formed new patterns. Supported by Arc Games Arc Games is the publisher for The Fallen Star. CEO Yoon Im said this announcement is very important for both the company and for Jonathan Blow's team, adding that the scale of the project and the number of designers involved make it very peculiar in their lineup. What Players Can See At The Moment The trailer makes this look like a game full of puzzles, characters, and small pieces of story. The worlds are distinct from each other, and every bit of it seems to be crafted with thoughtfulness. Everything shown so far demonstrates great attention to clean puzzle design, minimalistic visual language, and reliable structure.