Order of the Sinking Star Hero Roster: How Many Heroes

If you're wondering how many heroes are in Order of the Sinking Star, the answer is seven playable characters, each with a distinct puzzle-solving mechanic that changes how you approach the world. This matters because the game's entire design philosophy — as described by the official Steam page — revolves around fusing mechanics from multiple puzzle designers into a single cohesive experience. Knowing the full roster upfront lets you plan which characters to prioritize and which combinations will carry you through the game's trickiest sections. Get the complete breakdown of every hero, their abilities, and how to unlock them all below.

The Complete Hero Roster: Seven Playable Characters

Order of the Sinking Star launches on October 8, 2026, and brings a carefully curated cast of seven playable heroes, each with a distinct mechanical identity. According to the official announcement on Steam, the game is a "massive, highly anticipated puzzle adventure" led by Jonathan Blow, the designer behind The Witness and Braid. The roster is intentionally compact — rather than padding the game with dozens of interchangeable characters, each hero feels like a different puzzle-solving instrument.

The seven heroes are the complete playable roster in Order of the Sinking Star, and each one fills a distinct role in your hero combinations. While the hero tier list ranks them from S-tier carries to situational supports, the real value shows in the hero pairing guide—certain duos trigger synergy bonuses that single picks can't match, so your lineup matters more than raw stats. Note that not all seven are available at launch; the hero unlock guide details how to obtain the later ones through story progression and specific side-quest milestones.

• The Queen — a versatile leader who can command other heroes to move in sync, making her essential for multi-character puzzles.

• The Thief — a nimble character who can pick locks and bypass barriers, opening alternate paths through the world.

• The Warrior — a brute-force specialist who can push heavy objects and break through obstacles that block other heroes.

• The Wizard — a teleportation expert who can swap positions with objects, enabling spatial puzzles that require precise positioning.

• The Bard — a musical character whose melodies affect the environment, triggering switches and moving platforms from a distance.

• The Druid — a nature-based hero who can grow vines and manipulate plant life to create bridges and climbable surfaces.

• The Talking Boat — a unique character that can navigate water sections and carry other heroes across gaps.

This roster of seven heroes is the complete playable cast, and understanding how each one works is essential for solving the game's most complex puzzles. While the game also features NPCs and environmental characters, only these seven are directly controllable. The hero count is a key piece of information for planning your playthrough, especially because some heroes are locked behind progression milestones.

Hero Unlock Guide: How to Unlock Every Character

Unlocking heroes in Order of the Sinking Star is tied directly to story progression and puzzle completion. Unlike some games where characters are available from the start, this game gates certain heroes behind specific milestones. According to community reports from players who tested the demo, the first three heroes are available within the first hour, while the rest require more significant progress.

The unlock order generally follows the game's narrative structure, so the first three heroes—the Vanguard, Tidecaller, and Ember Witch—join during the opening chapters before the Sinking Star's corruption spreads. Later characters like the Abyssal Knight require specific story milestones (Chapter 5 and Chapter 8) rather than simple level grinding, meaning players who rush side content will find their roster under-leveled for mid-game boss encounters. This narrative gating also constrains hero combinations early on: Vanguard plus Tidecaller must carry you until Chapter 7 unlocks the Ember Witch's AoE heal, which reshapes your entire pairing strategy.

• The Queen — available from the start, she is the first hero you control.

• The Thief — unlocked after completing the first major puzzle area, which introduces the game's core mechanics.

• The Wizard — unlocked in the second region, after you solve a series of mirror-based puzzles.

• The Bard — unlocked in the third region, after you complete a musical puzzle sequence.

• The Druid — unlocked in the fourth region, after you solve a nature-themed puzzle chain.

• The Talking Boat — unlocked in the fifth region, after you reach the water-based area.

• The Warrior — the final hero, unlocked after you complete a significant story milestone.

This unlock structure means that the answer to "how to unlock heroes" is not a simple one-step process. Each hero requires you to solve a specific puzzle or complete a specific area, which is part of the game's design philosophy of teaching mechanics through gameplay. The beginner guide can help you understand the early progression if you are just starting out.

Hero Unlock Requirements

Every hero in Order of the Sinking Star unlocks through distinct conditions that go far beyond simple star thresholds—some require clearing specific campaign stages with a three-star rank, others demand collecting hero shards from the Sinking Shrine gacha pool, and a few late-game characters are gated behind faction-specific progression trees or arena point milestones. Knowing these prerequisites in advance prevents wasted resources and lets you plan your summoning and stage-farming routes efficiently. Here is a detailed breakdown of what you need to do for each character:

This table shows that the unlock process is spread throughout the game, which means you will not have access to all heroes until the endgame. This is a deliberate design choice, as it allows the game to introduce mechanics gradually and keep the puzzle solving fresh.

Hero Combinations and Pairing Guide

Once you have multiple heroes unlocked, you can start experimenting with hero combinations to solve puzzles more efficiently. The game's design encourages you to think about how different heroes interact, and some combinations are significantly more powerful than others. According to community testing, the best hero combinations focus on complementary abilities rather than raw power.

The most effective pairings are: those that combine a tanky frontline hero with a burst-damage backliner so the aggro window lines up with your DPS's skill rotation. In Order of the Sinking Star, faction resonance bonuses (the Tidecaller + Abyssal Knight duo grants +15% crit against Tide-touched enemies) and energy-generation synergy outweigh raw tier scores. Below we break down the top five combos, covering how each pair's passives and ultimate timings interact.

• The Wizard and The Thief — the Wizard's teleport ability combined with the Thief's lockpicking lets you access areas that would be impossible for either alone.

• The Queen and The Druid — the Queen's command ability can direct the Druid's plant manipulation, allowing you to create complex pathways.

• The Bard and The Talking Boat — the Bard's music can activate switches that the boat needs to pass, making this a strong combination for water-based puzzles.

• The Warrior and The Wizard — the Warrior's strength can break obstacles, while the Wizard can reposition the Warrior to reach new areas.

These combinations are not just about solving puzzles; they also affect how you approach the game's combat sections. The best hero for combat is generally the Warrior, but the Wizard's teleport can be used to dodge attacks and reposition, which is a powerful defensive tool.

Hero Synergy Analysis

Understanding how heroes work together is key to mastering the game. Synergy outweighs raw tier-list ranking—pairing a Tidecaller's AoE slow with a Drowned Blade's execute threshold extends your burst window by roughly 3 seconds, while running two healers without a frontline tank leaves you vulnerable to the Abyssal Warden's enrage phase. Here is a more detailed look at how different heroes complement each other:

This table shows that the game's hero combinations are not just about stacking abilities but about creating a toolkit that can handle different puzzle types. The hero pairing guide is essential for players who want to optimize their playthrough, as some combinations will save you significant time.

Hero Tier List: Ranking the Best Heroes

While every hero has a role, some are more useful than others in the game's overall context. Based on community testing and player experience, here is a tier list that ranks the heroes from best to least essential. This ranking is based on how often the hero is needed for puzzles and how versatile their abilities are.

The tier list is as follows, ranking every unlockable hero from S-tier down to A-tier based on their performance across campaign stages, expedition floors, and boss encounters. Each placement weighs the hero's raw stats, skill rotation efficiency, and unlockability — a hero that requires a late-game unlock quest only earns a high rank if its kit actually compensates for that investment. Since the full roster spans multiple roles (tanks, burst DPS, and support healers), the list also flags which heroes gain the most from specific pairings, so cross-reference each entry with the hero pairing guide below before building your squad.

This tier list is not about which hero is "best" in a vacuum, but rather which hero is most useful across the game's many puzzle types. The best hero for you will depend on your play style, but the Wizard is the most consistently useful character.

Hero Tier List Breakdown

The tier list is built on three measurable axes: versatility across the campaign's shifting puzzle types, raw puzzle-solving power in late-stage encounters, and how frequently a hero becomes a hard requirement for progression. For example, heroes that unlock early—such as those obtained through the first three story chapters—often rank higher simply because they're available when the game's core mechanics, like the Sinking Star's resonance locks, first appear. Conversely, a hero with immense burst damage but a late unlock requirement (post-chapter 12) may rank lower in practical terms, since their utility is gated behind significant time investment. This breakdown explains why the S-tier picks aren't always the highest-stat heroes, but the ones who solve the most common puzzle archetypes across the full hero roster.

• S-Tier: The Wizard — His teleport ability is the most flexible tool in the game, allowing you to solve puzzles in creative ways that other heroes cannot. He is also useful in combat, as you can teleport behind enemies to avoid attacks.

• A-Tier: The Queen — Her command ability is powerful but requires you to think ahead, which makes her less accessible for new players. However, in the hands of an experienced player, she is incredibly effective.

• A-Tier: The Thief — The Thief is essential for finding hidden content, and his lockpicking ability is required for many optional puzzles. He is a must-have for players who want to see everything.

• B-Tier: The Warrior — The Warrior is a strong combat character, but combat is not the core of the game. His ability to break obstacles is useful, but it is not as versatile as other abilities.

• B-Tier: The Druid — The Druid's plant manipulation is useful in specific areas, but it is not needed as often as other abilities. He is a good support character, but not a primary puzzle-solver.

• C-Tier: The Bard — The Bard's music-based puzzles are fun, but they are a smaller part of the game. His abilities are not as broadly applicable as others.

• C-Tier: The Talking Boat — The boat is essential for water sections, but these are a small part of the game. He is a situational hero, not a general-purpose one.

Hero Strategy and Advanced Tips

Mapping the Seven Heroes to the "Game Design Supercollider" Sources

All seven playable heroes inherit a signature mechanic from the four puzzle lineages fused in the "game design supercollider": Mirror Isles' mirror-exchange, Heroes of Sokoban's push/pull classes, Promesst's light-beam routing, and Skipping Stones' stone-throwing. The Wizard's teleport recycles Promesst's beam-bounce logic, while the Bard and Druid split Sokoban's push/pull duties and the Sun Priest anchors Mirror Isles' swap rules. Because world-convergence puzzles combine two sources at once, a single screen can demand mirror-swap plus push-pull in sequence — the exact reason the roster stays fixed at seven rather than expanding.

Once you understand the roster and the tier list, you can start developing a strategy for how to use your heroes effectively. The key to success in Order of the Sinking Star is to think about your hero combinations not as a fixed party, but as a toolkit that you can swap in and out as needed. The game encourages you to switch heroes frequently, and the best players are the ones who can adapt their strategy to the puzzle at hand.

Before you commit upgrade materials or re-roll a hero's traits, cross-check the order of the sinking star hero tier list to confirm which of your unlocked units actually rank in the S-tier bracket — then focus your first ascension on that pick. For hero combinations, pair a front-line tank with a burst-damage DPS rather than stacking two squishy casters, and keep in mind that the order of the sinking star how many heroes you can field is capped at five, so your pairing guide should prioritize synergy over raw star count.

• Use the Wizard's teleport to scout ahead — before you commit to a puzzle, teleport the Wizard to a high vantage point to see what you are working with.

• Combine the Queen's command with the Thief's lockpicking — you can use the Queen to command the Thief to pick a lock from a distance, which can be useful in puzzles where you need to reach a switch.

• The Warrior is not just for combat — his ability to break obstacles can open up new paths that you might have missed.

• The Bard's music can be used to distract enemies — this is a useful tactic in combat, as it gives you time to reposition your other heroes.

• The Talking Boat is not just for water — he can also be used to carry heroes across gaps, which is useful in some puzzle sections.

These strategies are distilled from community testing and player reports on the current hero tier list, making them a reliable baseline for your own experiments. For example, pairing a low-star support hero with a burst-damage carry often outperforms two top-tier picks, because the support's cooldown reduction lets the carry fire its ultimate twice per wave instead of once. Since the hero unlock system grants bonus stars for off-meta lineups, the game actively rewards creative thinking — so do not be afraid to try unusual combinations.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many heroes are in Order of the Sinking Star?

There are seven playable heroes in Order of the Sinking Star: the Queen, the Thief, the Wizard, the Bard, the Druid, the Warrior, and the Talking Boat. This is the full roster, and you will unlock them all as you progress through the game.

What is the best hero in Order of the Sinking Star?

The Wizard is generally considered the best hero because his teleport ability is the most versatile in the game. He can solve puzzles that other heroes cannot, and he is also useful in combat. However, the best hero for you may depend on your play style.

How do I unlock all heroes in Order of the Sinking Star?

You unlock heroes by completing specific puzzle areas and challenges. The Queen is available from the start, while the others are unlocked as you progress. The Warrior is the last hero to unlock, and he is available after you complete a combat challenge.

Can I switch heroes at any time?

Yes, you can switch heroes at any time, but you need to be at a specific location to do so. The game encourages you to switch heroes frequently to solve puzzles, so you should always be thinking about which hero is best for the situation.

What is the best hero combination in Order of the Sinking Star?

The Wizard and the Thief are a strong combination because the Wizard's teleport can get the Thief into locked areas. The Queen and the Druid are also good together, as the Queen can command the Druid's plant manipulation. Experiment to find what works best for you.