Order of the Sinking Star's Bardmoves objects with her music

The Bard in Order of the Sinking Star has a rather practical use for a musical aura: moving things. Shacknews' Sam Chandler describes objects caught inside its radius travelling with her. A rock becomes something to carry through a puzzle by playing near it. Behind that neat fantasy is an unusually elaborate instrument, built so her lute can join the soundtrack and stop again without an awkward musical splice.

Thekla's puzzle adventure is due to unlock on PC at 6pm BST on 8 October, according to its official global schedule; Steam still marked it as forthcoming when checked before that time. Independent reviews are already available. They offer a closer look at the heroes than the broad four-world pitch, while the developer's audio interview explains what went into making this particular musician sound convincing.

A moving company with a musical employee

The publisher places the Bard in The Hearty Heroes of Hauling, the northern world's party of six fantasy adventurers who run a local moving company. That is a lovely job for a puzzle-game cast. Pushing, pulling and teleporting become different ways to get the work done, and the official account describes combining those actions into chains involving several heroes. The lute belongs among the removal tools.

Chandler's review, based on a publisher-supplied Steam code, adds a useful complication: character abilities happen automatically when their conditions are met. The Thief pulls objects as she moves away; the Wizard swaps positions with objects he approaches. The Bard's aura belongs to that same set of inherent traits. You therefore have to plan movement around what a character will do, including when that action would be inconvenient.

That gives carrying something a different shape from pushing it. With the Bard, the relevant space includes the area around her, rather than only the tile directly ahead. Planning her route means accounting for what travels with her. The appeal is in that change of viewpoint: an object and a character can form a moving arrangement, so getting the musician herself to the right square is only part of the problem.

A lute assembled note by note

In the official making-of interview, composer Peter Due says the Bard's music changes when her aura catches a person or object. Music designer Martin Stig Andersen explains the instrument behind it: lute player Fredrik Bock recorded note variations in 2022, including open and stopped strings, trills and chords. The resulting 1,300 sound files are triggered individually during play, according to the gameplay and musical context.

Andersen says that approach lets the Bard start and stop alongside the background music without awkward crossfades. It is an appealing match between the character's task and the technology: her performance has to accommodate the player's movement. The recorded material gives the game smaller musical pieces to work with, rather than requiring a complete performance to run from beginning to end whenever she gets involved.

The musical polish doesn't remove the need to think. Entertainium's Gareth Brading describes switching between the heroes during play and being able to rewind a mistake even when it kills one of them. His PC account supplies a reassuring companion to the Bard's complicated movement: experimentation can be undone. A character's fatal misstep needn't mean throwing away the arrangement you were trying to understand.

The Bard is worth attention because the character's music does useful work on both sides of the screen. Within the puzzle, it gathers things into a moving group; in the soundtrack, her lute has to fit around whatever the player does next. The pleasure of the idea is wonderfully literal: this moving company employs a musician who can carry the furniture with her song.