- North first: The Hearty Heroes of Hauling. It has the gentlest start, and it is the only campaign more than a third of Steam players have finished.
- East second: The Mirror Isles. It builds on the pushing and swapping you just learned.
- West third, South last: The Promise (Beamcasters) and Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes are the two hardest. More players have finished the West than the South, so play South last.
- Then the Gold Rooms: six rooms, one for each pair of worlds. Heroes × Mirrors (HxM) is the one most players open first.
None of this is enforced. All four paths open from the Crossroads, so when one puzzle stops you, leave and play somewhere else.
The first minutes: Crossroads and the map
A short tutorial teaches pushing, rewinding and restarting. You then reach a hub called the Crossroads, with one path in each compass direction. Two guides published at launch (allthings.how and the French site Booster Breakerz) both say to pick up the map lying just above the Crossroads before you go anywhere. A Steam forum reply from October 11 adds that you need the map to zoom the camera out. Without it, the zoom is missing in some areas.
- Stars start puzzles. Standing on a puzzle's star shows a preview of the board. You can also replay a puzzle after solving it (GamingTrend review).
- Fast travel points appear on the overworld once activated, so walking back to an old puzzle is quick.
- Unsolved puzzles blink pink on the overworld map. The lights are small, so zoom in if you can't see them (Steam forum, October 11).
- The overworld grows as you solve puzzles. The fog lifts and new areas appear, according to the developer's "Explore the Realm" announcement.
Best world order, with completion data
The developer says there is no single "right way" to proceed. The order below is our recommendation, based on what reviewers and early guides report and on Steam's global achievement stats. Each world has an achievement for finishing its "initial campaign", so the percentages show how many Steam players have finished each one.
| Order | World | Core rule | Players finished | Why this slot |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | North Hearty Heroes of Hauling | Several heroes, each with one way to move blocks | GamingTrend's reviewer says the game itself nudges you north first. Rooms start with one hero before mixing several. | |
| 2 | East The Mirror Isles | Swap places with your reflection; mirrors can be pushed | Reuses push and teleport ideas from the North. Both launch guides put it second. | |
| 3 | West The Promise (Beamcasters) | Gems power coloured beams that grant temporary powers | Push Square calls it "the most complex", and AltChar says the game warns you before you enter. Still, more players finish it than the South. | |
| 4 | South Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes | Stones skip over water, lily pads drift, currents get redirected | Fewest finishers by far. GamingBolt's reviewer was "flummoxed" from the first puzzle, and several of the launch-week "I'm stuck" threads on Steam are about it. |
* The Mirror Isles achievement currently fails to unlock for players who finished those puzzles in the demo (a bug the team says it will fix), so its real figure is somewhat higher. Percentages come from Steam's global achievement stats on October 12, 2026, four days after launch, and will rise.
Where we differ from other guides: Booster Breakerz suggests North → East → South → West. We swap the last two because Steam's data shows nearly twice as many players finishing the West's initial campaign as the South's. If the West's beam colours give you trouble (there is no colour-blind mode yet), do the South third instead. The order is your choice.
First-pass tips for each world
These tips cover the rules, not the solutions. Each one comes from the developer's own descriptions, published reviews or Steam forum players, and we say which below.
North The Hearty Heroes of Hauling
- Learn one hero at a time. The Warrior pushes, the Thief can only pull, and the Wizard swaps places with whatever he is facing. All three have the same fixed abilities in every room (PlayStation Blog hands-on, Push Square, GamingBolt).
- Monsters follow rules. Goblins kill a hero standing on an adjacent square. Beasts breathe fire along a straight line. Some gates only open once the monsters are dealt with, and monsters can be tricked into hitting each other (PlayStation Blog).
- Plan the order of heroes, not just the moves. The developer's own tip is to treat the team "like a Swiss Army Knife" and set up chains where one hero's move enables the next.
- A Steam player stuck on a big shared room was told that red stone plaques mark content from a much later layer of the game. If a door looks impossible and has a red plaque, come back later.
The full move list for every hero is in Heroes & abilities.
East The Mirror Isles
- Your reflection is a destination. Using a mirror swaps you with your reflection. The developer's tip is that stepping back from a mirror projects the reflection farther.
- Mirrors move. You can push them, send objects through them, and later make clones of yourself that all move at once (Push Square, AltChar). GamingBolt notes that breaking a mirror is one way to stop clones from being made.
- Clone tricks may be rejected. Nintendo Life's reviewer cheesed a puzzle with a pile of clones, and the game refused to count it. If a solution feels like an exploit, it may not register.
West The Promise (Beamcasters)
- Beams give powers only while you stand in them. The officially listed powers are passing through walls, smashing boulders and long-distance teleporting. Gems power the generators, and you carry gems around to switch beams on and off (developer announcement, Push Square).
- Turning a beam off is often the move. Push Square stresses deactivating beams as much as activating them.
- Read the beam's pattern, not just its colour. A colour-weak player on Steam explains that square clouds open red square blocks, smoke rings let you walk through walls, and zig-zags teleport you two steps. This comes from a single player; the details are on the abilities page.
- Pick up the area's map if you cannot zoom out. Several players found the zoom missing until they did (Steam forum, October 11).
South Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes
- Land vs water: on land a stone moves one tile per push. Pushed into water, it skips across until it reaches the next shore. Don't push a stone into a spot you can't get behind again (AltChar review).
- Lily pads drift when a stone passes next to them. They can also carry a stone and become a stepping spot (AltChar). The developer adds that you can redirect the water so lily pads glide where you need them.
- Keep the dialogue on here. A Steam player notes that the Skipping Stones dialogue tells you the goal and how many items you need. It is one of the few places where muting dialogue costs you information.
- Hidden treasures are optional on a first pass. The first Skipping Stones map has six hidden treasures. Some solutions lock you out of them, and later Stones maps teach the tricks you need, so collect them later (Steam forum, October 12).
- The October 9 patch fixed "bad checkpointing in a few Skipping Stones levels". If a restart leaves you with fewer stones than you started with, update the game first.
Gold Rooms, Antipode and Endgame route
Once the four initial campaigns are under way, the game moves on to Gold Rooms. According to the developer, clearing a Gold Room "bridges two distinct realms" and unlocks one of six dual-combination areas, one for each pair of worlds. The achievement names use one letter per world: H Heroes, M Mirror Isles, S Skipping Stones, B Beamcasters.
| Pair | Worlds combined | Gold Room opened | Antipode teleporter |
|---|---|---|---|
| HxM | Heroes + Mirror Isles | 16.5% | 8.0% |
| HxB | Heroes + Beamcasters | 9.0% | 1.9% |
| HxS | Heroes + Skipping Stones | 7.1% | 1.1% |
| MxB | Mirror Isles + Beamcasters | 6.8% | 2.1% |
| SxB | Skipping Stones + Beamcasters | 4.8% | 2.0% |
| MxS | Mirror Isles + Skipping Stones | 3.9% | 1.6% |
Source: Steam global achievements ("Gold HxM… Open the HxM gold room", "Antipode HxM… Activate the HxM teleporter to the Antipode"). Only 0.9% have the "Endgame" achievement so far.
- Open HxM first. It pairs the two campaigns most players finish first. On Steam, more players have opened it than any other Gold Room.
- Then whichever pair uses your strongest world. Heroes pairs (HxB, HxS) come next for most players, and pairs with Skipping Stones come last.
- Gold Rooms need specific puzzles. Locked birdcage-like objects on the overworld show an arrow pointing to the puzzle they require. Walk up to one and follow the arrow (Steam forum, October 11).
- Each pair also has a teleporter to the Antipode. Activating all six, then completing the Endgame, is the route the achievement list lays out. A Steam player who finished the Endgame on October 12 told someone stuck there that it is "definitely solvable" and to work backwards from the obvious final steps.
Light spoiler: Steam lists more hidden achievements after the Endgame ("Ascend", "Descend", "High" and "Low" variants per world and pair). Fewer than 1% of players have them, and we do not describe them here.
Sources, all checked October 12, 2026: the Steam store page and global achievement stats; the developer's Steam announcements "New Trailer – Explore the Realm" (Sept 23) and "Update notes for October 9"; the PlayStation Blog hands-on (July 21); reviews by GamingTrend, Push Square, GamingBolt, AltChar and Nintendo Life; launch guides by allthings.how and Booster Breakerz; and Steam Community discussion threads dated October 10–12. Nothing on this page was hands-on tested by this site.