Compare SPRAWL zero vs Order of the Sinking Star

Switch 2 death reloads can take roughly 25 seconds to more than a minute, which is far too long for a fast shooter built around repeated attempts.

Immediate starts and instant puzzle restarts receive praise. One PC experience instead reports an unresponsive black screen during launch.

Aim-assist and objective-marker toggles, plus broad difficulty settings, let players tailor how much guidance and challenge they want.

Quiet presentation can aid concentration, but color-coded beams and subtle secondary cues may create difficulties for players with color-vision differences. Optional guidance is also a recurring accessibility concern.

Handheld results are mixed to poor: Steam Deck struggles to hold 60 FPS, and Switch 2 can drop sharply in busy scenes. VRR helps in some portable situations, but performance remains the main caveat.

Short puzzle sessions suit portable play well, and positive Switch 2 and Steam Deck accounts find it easy to keep chipping away. Performance compromises and inconsistent platform experiences remain caveats.

The campaign introduces hazards, new enemies, and occasional structural changes, but the basic loop can still feel repetitive over a full run.

Four distinct puzzle systems and their combinations create an unusually broad range of challenges. A few players still find prolonged stretches within one region repetitive.

The brutalist city has a distinctive identity, but many areas reuse similar concrete corridors, browns, greys, and industrial spaces. Visual repetition can make midgame locations blur together.

Fine textures, decorative flourishes, and carefully designed objects give the fantasy spaces a strong visual identity.

The combination of fast movement, distinctive weapon audio, and era-fitting music can be highly immersive, especially with headphones.

Expressive animation and an appealing sense of place draw some players into the world. Others feel the hub and unfinished voices create distance from the adventure.

Five's attempted character arc has interesting ideas but often lacks enough clarity or emotional investment to land.

Some players become invested in the characters through their conversations and distinctive limitations. Others find the snippets too scattered, dull, or brief to build much attachment.

Some open objective areas create a welcome sandbox feel, but the broader campaign often provides less mission freedom than its pitch suggests.

Choosing another route helps many players recover from frustration and find fresh ideas. Freedom within individual solutions is less consistent, with some accounts criticizing strict acceptance rules.

Holding large throwable objects can block the player's view and make it harder to see targets or obstructions during combat.

Zooming out helps with planning across connected puzzle screens. The fixed grid perspective can also feel monotonous to players wanting more visual variety.

Silas and supporting characters such as Laeta make a stronger impression than Five, giving the otherwise lightweight story more personality.

Personable performances and meaningful interactions make the supporting cast memorable for some. Others find their fragmented stories or exchanges insufficiently engaging.

Frequent green-gate checkpoints are generous and keep deaths from becoming overly punishing.

Remembered puzzle positions make leaving and returning convenient. Long interconnected sections can still demand extensive repetition when a full reset becomes necessary.

The shoot-empty-throw-grab rhythm is the game's defining strength. Constant weapon swaps and physics interactions create a fast loop that many find addictive once it clicks.

For enthusiasts, another block-pushing puzzle is an inviting reason to keep playing. For others, the same central activity becomes routine despite changing mechanics.

No knowledge of the original SPRAWL is required, and the mechanics are easy to pick up despite their unusual weapon rules.

The immediate opening and recommended northern route can make getting started pleasantly direct. Some demo impressions nevertheless find the early hook weak.

Progression stays refreshingly simple, with linear ability upgrades instead of sprawling skill trees or multiple currencies.

Numerous available routes usually offer a way forward when one puzzle blocks progress. Global stalls, unclear intermediate progress, and dependencies on other regions can still break the flow.

Secrets and hidden areas can be satisfying to hunt, but some exploration rewards amount to weapon caches or collectibles that do not always feel equally exciting.

Uncovering the map and recognizing hidden world puzzles can rival the pleasure of solving individual rooms. A less enthusiastic account finds newly opened routes bland.

The deliberately retro rendering is widely praised for looking sharp, attractive, and authentic to the era it emulates. Resolution and image quality vary by platform.

Colorful environments and attractive detail earn substantial praise, including at low Steam Deck settings. Busy screens, small objects, and underwhelming resolution trouble some players.

The compact campaign generally lands well, with estimates ranging from roughly five to ten hours. Some appreciate the lack of bloat, while others would happily take a little more.

The enormous collection is a welcome long-term project for dedicated solvers. Others feel the scope delays major payoffs or turns progress into an exhausting commitment.

Movement is generally fluid, purposeful, and well matched to the more grounded combat. Some miss the predecessor's freer parkour, but others prefer the tighter focus.

Clear movement and easy block manipulation are appreciated. Another account reports occasional unwanted nudges from character momentum.

The systems move quickly but remain easy to understand, making the game approachable without sacrificing room for mastery.

Puzzles often teach through carefully staged interactions and increasingly useful lessons. Abrupt complexity, forgotten rules, and understated explanations can still cause confusion.

Frame-rate stability is the biggest technical concern on handheld hardware. Steam Deck and Switch 2 can suffer heavy drops in busy combat, while other platforms fare better.

Results vary sharply by platform and account. Several Switch 2 tests report substantial dips, one finds mostly 60 fps, and Steam Deck and PS5 reports also include occasional or significant drops.

The setting has more background depth than the main story initially suggests, with codex entries and environmental details filling in the city's factions and history.

World mysteries and character lore motivate some players to persist. The scattered delivery can make interesting fragments difficult to organize.

Gravity Gloves make the environment an active weapon: barrels, grenades, health pods, debris, doors, and even enemies can be manipulated. This physical interactivity is one of the game's strongest defining traits.

Applying learned abilities to the overworld adds another rewarding layer of puzzling. The larger map can become a meaningful challenge in its own right.

The game wears its Halo, F.E.A.R., Half-Life 2, and Y2K influences openly, yet the disposable-weapon combat and cohesive presentation give it a clear identity of its own.

Several players find the fusion of puzzle systems unlike anything they have played. One first impression argues that familiar freeware foundations and newer genre rivals weaken its novelty.

The overwhelming strength is simple enjoyment: fast fights, absurd weapons, physics tricks, and a strong soundtrack make the game easy to enjoy even when level or technical issues surface.

Many players describe an absorbing one-more-puzzle loop that keeps them returning. The same prolonged challenge leaves others bored, weary, or frustrated.

Story dialogue can be difficult to follow because much of it arrives during active firefights.

Enjoyable banter and moments of levity coexist with complaints about verbose, stilted, or distracting exchanges. Delivery in small fragments can make context difficult to retain.

New Game+ is a standout post-campaign feature, remixing enemy placement while letting players bring upgraded abilities back through earlier levels.

The first credits open the door to further discoveries and more ambitious combinations. Players who enjoy deeper mysteries find this continuation especially rewarding.

The low-poly, brown-and-neon Y2K cyberpunk look is one of the game's most consistently praised qualities. A few players find the deliberately drab palette monotonous, but the style itself is unusually cohesive.

Colorful fantasy regions, painterly scenery, and carefully styled floors draw widespread praise. A few players find the world too busy or the characters visually disconnected from their surroundings.

SPRAWL zero does not reinvent shooters wholesale, but the disposable-weapon economy and Gravity Gloves give its retro framework a distinctive modern hook.

Many accounts admire the sustained invention produced by combining different puzzle languages. A dissenting first impression finds the game insufficiently fresh beside newer Sokoban adventures.

Volumetric lighting, reflections, and other deliberately era-styled effects add flair without losing the early-2000s visual identity.

Sparkling beams, flames, and character abilities create attractive lighting and satisfying visual feedback.

The story's ideas are interesting, but faction explanations can slip into exposition-heavy writing that is hard to absorb during a fast shooter.

Opinions range from approval of a strong script to criticism of generic, verbose, or confusing lines. Thin context and scattered delivery frequently weaken the writing’s impact.

Challenge is highly inconsistent across perspectives: some enjoy the tougher fights and adjustable settings, while others dislike late spikes, shielded enemies, and bullet-spongy foes that interrupt combat flow.

The challenge creates powerful breakthroughs for patient puzzle fans, but can become exhausting or demoralizing. Opinions differ on whether its complexity teaches new thinking or overloads memory and execution.

Industrial cityscapes, propaganda, fog, electronic music, and religious imagery create a strong early-2000s cyberpunk mood that quickly pulls players in.

Calm scenery and restrained audio can make exploration feel almost therapeutic. The soothing presentation provides a welcome counterweight to demanding puzzles.

The overall package is strong but not uniformly polished. Later-balance issues and occasional bugs contrast with a presentation that otherwise feels carefully assembled.

Cohesive presentation and purposeful construction impress many players. Prerelease voice and subtitle work, plus substantial Switch 2 defects in some tests, complicate that impression.

The story is serviceable rather than central. It provides enough context and a few twists, but several takes find it confusing, emotionally thin, or too dependent on mid-combat exposition.

The layered mystery becomes compelling for some players, especially as worlds and characters connect. Others find it thin, distant, or too fragmented to motivate the lengthy journey.

The one-gun system, Gravity Gloves, powers, environmental throws, and aggressive movement combine into a mechanically strong throwback that still feels fresh.

Simple pushing, pulling, teleporting, and other abilities grow into richly interwoven systems. Their cross-world interactions are the game’s most widely admired creative strength.

Technical bugs range from nearly absent on some systems to enemies getting stuck in geometry or triggers failing. The most disruptive cases can force a checkpoint reload.

Several PC and PS5 experiences are clean, while others encounter minor bugs or startup trouble. Switch 2 reports include rewind errors and a severe docked-display glitch in one test.

Pacing is mixed: the best stretches flow beautifully, but long walking sections, repeated objectives, backtracking, and bullet-spongy encounters can stall the momentum.

Bite-sized rooms and time controls suit short sessions and reduce waiting. Constant escalation, slow story beats, and long stretches before major revelations can erode momentum.

The presentation can trigger a strong hit of nostalgia for players who grew up with early-2000s console shooters.

Successful solutions can deliver immense satisfaction and make players feel brilliantly capable. Long sessions and repeated roadblocks can instead leave them mentally drained.

Animation is mostly solid, with only a few minor hitches noted around launch.

Expressive, readable movement generally adds personality without obscuring the puzzles. One prerelease account found some animations conspicuously awkward.

Xbox Play Anywhere adds meaningful flexibility, while VRR and other display features do not fully solve the Switch 2 technical problems.

One Switch 2 test reports a docked-display defect severe enough to prevent television play. That platform-specific failure materially limits flexibility in that build.

The core game is widely considered worth the asking price thanks to replay systems and strong combat, but poor Switch 2 launch performance can erase that value until patched.

The large puzzle collection at roughly $30 is widely viewed as excellent value. A player who cannot overcome its unsupported difficulty finds the same purchase hard to justify.

One claim about approaching missions in different ways does not fully match the experience, which can remain much more linear than advertised.

Clear disclosure that some demo voices were temporary earns approval for its honesty.

Performance varies dramatically by platform. Some PC runs are smooth, while Steam Deck and Switch 2 can suffer substantial drops, indicating uneven optimization.

Some PC and PS5 tests report flawless play, while Steam Deck runs well with lower settings. Switch 2 results range from impressive to severely troubled, and demo improvements do not establish final performance.

The electronic, trance, techno, and breakcore-inspired score is one of the most universally praised parts of the game, driving fights with energy while easing back between encounters.

Restrained, soothing music supports long periods of thought, with some accounts praising its orchestral variety and adaptive fading. It often provides welcome calm during frustrating puzzles.

Light Gravity Glove puzzles can be enjoyable, but repeated power-cell tasks are also criticized as padding.

Clever, meticulously constructed puzzles consistently earn high praise, especially when rules collide. Criticism focuses on rejected alternative solutions, weaker regional sets, and occasional overcomplication.

The dystopian city, factions, propaganda, architecture, and hidden lore create a richer setting than the lightweight main plot alone suggests.

Distinct environments and regional identities help the fantasy worlds feel coherent. One account finds the collaboration theme undermined by contradictions surrounding the project.

Navigation is a recurring weakness because similar-looking spaces and backtracking can make routes hard to read. The optional waypoint ping helps substantially but does not solve every layout.

Zoom levels, puzzle previews, and distinct regional styling generally help orientation. Finding a specific abandoned puzzle or understanding boundaries between connected sections can still be difficult.

Level design is sharply divisive. Some stages are praised for secrets, varied arenas, and nonlinear objectives, while others feel overlong, repetitive, confusing, or padded by backtracking.

Lean, purposeful layouts make small details matter and can subtly guide solutions. Large connected sections are less forgiving when one mistake forces broad repetition.

A small loading-screen communication issue can make it unclear when the game is ready for input.

Zoom tools help with larger puzzles, but small visuals and the lack of convenient story-reference menus draw complaints. One Switch 2 account also strongly dislikes the interface’s appearance.

Weapons hit with exceptional weight and punch, and the overall mix sells the violence well. Overprocessed voice lines are the notable audio drawback.

Ambient details, footsteps, block movement, and rewind sounds receive warm praise. Audio feedback helps the world feel tactile and pleasant to inhabit.

Five is the weak link in the cast for some players, with limited characterization making his arc harder to care about.

The Queen is compelling in one full-game account, while a demo impression partly agrees that she lacks charisma early on.

Silas's performance is singled out as convincingly malevolent and effective.

Human performances generally add considerable charm and personality, sometimes earning exceptional praise. Regional unevenness and temporary prerelease voices explain several less favorable experiences.

Shooting and movement usually feel modern, tight, and responsive despite the retro presentation. Switch 2 input latency is the main exception.

Instant undo, reset, and time controls are among the most consistently praised features. They encourage experimentation and make mistaken moves easy to recover from.

Relic and modifier functions are useful but can be easy to overlook in the main menu.

One PC account finds the lack of a conventional main menu awkward, especially when looking for options before play.

Handheld power use is a concern, particularly in the overworld. Steam Deck and Switch 2 accounts describe heavier battery drain than expected for this style of puzzler.

Enemies often flank, reposition, throw grenades, and pressure the player instead of standing still. Pathfinding and wall-stuck bugs can undermine that intelligence, especially in a few later encounters.

Gunplay is generally accurate and responsive, though one take found aiming down sights adds little compared with the intended hip-fire style.

The voice ensemble earns praise for its strength and range. Familiar names are valued for the personality they bring to the cast.

The ensemble of fantasy workers, explorers, and a talking boat makes the adventure feel personable and varied.

A demo-based account welcomes the stated influence of play order on how the story unfolds, while leaving the full payoff untested.

Thinking through puzzles with a partner can create memorable shared breakthroughs. This praise concerns informal collaboration around a single-player game.

Codex entries and relics give explorers extra goals, with relics feeding modifiers and challenges. The lack of a clear per-level tracker makes completion hunting less convenient.

Combat is the clear centerpiece: disposable guns, Gravity Gloves, Bullet Time, shields, and Rushdown combine into frantic improvisational fights. At its best, the system feels fast, expressive, and exceptionally satisfying.

The stated absence of a season pass reassures a demo player who prefers the content included in one purchase.

Sharing solutions on the couch can deepen appreciation for the puzzles, especially when rewind lets one person demonstrate their reasoning. No dedicated co-op mode is established by this account.

One PC account reports no crashes, but another experiences random failures during launch. A Switch 2 account also includes crashes among its technical frustrations.

Rewinding after a death makes recovery forgiving and keeps the focus on trying another solution.

Health and adrenaline systems reward smart ability use, giving Bullet Time, shields, and other powers a meaningful role in resource management.

Enemy variety is generally strong, with snipers, shielded heavies, drones, melee threats, and other specialists forcing different responses. A few sections still feel repetitive when familiar foes dominate.

The miniature version of the map is widely appreciated as a clever shortcut. Its usefulness varies with route and familiarity, and some backtracking remains cumbersome.

A prerelease account strongly dislikes the artificial voices used alongside human performers. The complaint concerns temporary voice work described as awaiting replacement.

Repetition can creep in during the longer stretches, making the campaign feel grindy when combat variables stop changing enough.

Some players value being left to discover answers independently. More often, missing optional hints or excessively cryptic clues make difficult roadblocks harder to tolerate.

Color-coded weapon tiers and readable pickup information make it easy to understand what is on the ground during frantic fights.

Natural banter brings welcome levity to otherwise tense situations, though its frequency can be excessive in the northern region.

Color-coded weapon rarity makes stronger drops easy to identify without slowing down the action.

The campaign does mix in poison-gas runs, powered-down sequences, defense sections, and other twists, though not every experiment lands.

A demo player welcomes the stated pay-once approach rather than dividing the experience into a season pass.

Most accounts recommend it strongly to dedicated puzzle fans, with several calling it a masterpiece. Fatigue, fragmented storytelling, and uneven technical results keep the recommendation conditional for others.

Teaching through simple introductory puzzles is generally praised for being organic and effective. The game expects players to infer rules and carry those lessons forward.

Abilities upgrade at a steady pace and usually add meaningful power without burying the player in menus. A few powers or later upgrades feel less useful than others.

The exaggerated gore, dismemberment, flaming enemies, and bloody impacts are treated as part of the fun rather than a drawback, fitting the game's over-the-top shooter tone.

The huge arsenal is a major strength, with distinct tiers and behaviors encouraging constant adaptation. Some weak drops, shield interactions, and disposable limits can occasionally make a preferred weapon feel short-lived.

Bosses are uneven: some encounters are enjoyable or appropriately challenging, but the final fight is repeatedly called frustrating, repetitive, or poorly matched to the game's best combat.

Objective structure is one of the weaker areas, with repeated backtracking, holdout tasks, and one especially long poison-gas mission drawing criticism.

Freedom to change regions helps players manage difficult puzzles, and the overworld itself adds further challenges. Its sheer scale and required travel feel unwieldy or unengaging to some.

Prerelease subtitles draw criticism for typos, missing lines, and mismatches with spoken dialogue. These faults make conversations harder to follow.

New Game+, remixed enemies, relic modifiers, secrets, and higher difficulties give the short campaign strong replay potential for players who enjoy mastering the combat.

Preserving puzzle positions and action history makes it easy to resume after exploring elsewhere. Positive accounts find this continuity reassuring.