Count the skips before you throw. The stone creates a path only where it touches down, and a wasted throw usually cannot be recovered without a level restart.
The South - Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes
Open from the Overworld start
DOSSIER
What this entry covers
A marooned Sailor crosses open water and travels island to island. Traversal leans on precise route planning, river redirection and stone-skipping logic: where a thrown stone lands determines the path that exists at all. The realm is the origin of one of the game's four foundational design contributions.
PROTOCOL CHAIN
How to work this entry
Redirect the river before solving the crossing, not after. Current direction decides whether a created path stays usable.
Plan the whole route on the first look. This realm punishes step-by-step improvisation more than any other branch.
Revisit after earning abilities elsewhere. Several crossings that look impossible on first arrival are built for a later mechanic.
FIELD NOTES
Reading The South - Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes in play
FIELD NOTE 01
Reading the board before you move
Count the skips before you throw. The stone creates a path only where it touches down, and a wasted throw usually cannot be recovered without a level restart.
FIELD NOTE 02
Working the chain in order
Redirect the river before solving the crossing, not after. Current direction decides whether a created path stays usable.
FIELD NOTE 03
How this entry reads in motion
Plan the whole route on the first look. This realm punishes step-by-step improvisation more than any other branch.
PLATE WALL
SOURCES
Where this entry comes from
Each record below backs a specific claim on this page. Tier 1 is the developer or publisher speaking in their own words, tier 2 is established press, and tier 3 is creator coverage. Quotations are rendered in written form; the exact spoken wording from the source is kept underneath each one for verification.
- 01 TIER 1 - OFFICIAL Steam News - Community Announcements VERIFIED 2026-10-11
A marooned Sailor crosses open water and travels island to island. Traversal leans on precise route planning, river redirection and stone-skipping logic: where a thrown stone lands
“The South (Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes): Follows a marooned Sailor who must cross open waters and travel from island to island.”
OPEN SOURCE → - 02 TIER 1 - OFFICIAL Steam store page (Thekla, Inc.) VERIFIED 2026-10-11
Entity identity and official naming for The South - Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes
“From legendary director Jonathan Blow (Braid, The Witness) comes Order of the Sinking Star, a massive puzzle adventure featuring more than one thousand hand-crafted puzzles designed to put your intellect to the test. You”
OPEN SOURCE →
GRID RELATIONS
Cross-board links
Dossiers reference each other directly, so no entry is a dead end. Outbound links leave this entry; inbound links arrive from elsewhere in the atlas.
OUTBOUND → 4
INBOUND ← 8
- [WOR] The Overworld Central hub
- [MEC] Stone Skipping Routing mechanic
- [MEC] Water Routing State mechanic
- [HER] The Sailor South protagonist
- [GOL] Gold Rooms - The Merge Mechanism Structural hinge
- [GOL] Merged Zone: The Hauling Crew + Skipping Stones Dual-combination area
- [STU] The Game Design Supercollider Design method
- [STU] Alan Hazelden Founding designer, two realms