Played an earlier version and they seemed to work fine
but on a replay of current patch they gave me much trouble till i saw the comment by epholos
so yeah, they are bugged
they need to be entered from left to right now (for whatever reason)

Are you sure you got it completely correct? The statue colors you find around the island are a little muted compared to the room, but you can tell which statue it is by matching the face/shape. If yes, then yeah, that puzzle's bugged.

It gets even worse, this puzzle is bugged! I couldnt figure it out and turned to this guide only for the solution to do nothing at all. I double checked and swapped yellow with orange and still nothing. After I completed everything else on the island (also did the statues left most to right most) only then did it work.

I don't know what you mean by your other comment, though. The colors of the statues you find on the island are a bit more muted compared to the ones in the statue room, so maybe that is related to your qualm?

The solution to this puzzle is random. Most solutions to meta puzzles in the game are random per save file to prevent players from not understanding why the solution is the way it is.

On the map screen with the six statues, the statue shown even shares the same expression as one specific statue in the area, but its color is deliberately matched to the one you’re supposed to discard, forcing confusion onto the player. Why resort to such a disgusting red herring? Do you honestly think this makes you clever puzzle designers? It’s nothing but a revolting trick.

If you’re going to call this nonsense a “solution,” the red statue should never have been the one discarded. The red statue is clearly tied to the red god, so if proper placement doesn’t solve the puzzle, players will assume the problem is the order of placement. If instead the green statue were the one to throw away, that would make sense—green symbolizes the turtle, and tossing it into the sea feels natural. But because the discarded statue is randomized, you get the absurd situation where the red statue is the one removed, and that’s nothing but a disgusting red herring. I wasted twelve hours before giving up. If you were going to pull a trick like this, the red statue should have been off-limits. This isn’t a real puzzle—it’s a grotesque bait-and-switch that forces players to guess the developer’s mind instead of solving with logic. It has absolutely nothing to do with intelligence or problem-solving.

@SherlockedE Your pfp fits perfectly with the text.

Upset.I never use guides for puzzle games,and so did this.I solved everything myself,except this statue puzzle and the final hidden room.
For this puzzle,I scoured the volcano map ten times over.Pushed every block.Leapt into every lava pool. I thought the purple statue might be in that inaccessible hot spring (E2).I thought the purple statue was somewhere in this puzzle’s area (since it only appears here),but after trying every possible position for the purple statue with no success,I started to wonder if there was no response because I hadn’t made the purple statue appear.I tried placing it upside down, left and right.I wondered why there were seven colors for the markers—maybe rainbow?...
Pushing it into sea does make logical sense and fits the mechanics,and it’s a clever little touch by the dev.But after finding out this was the solution,all I could do was curse under my breath,then sink into a long silence.The entire game quietly dropped a notch in my esteem...

Ffs, i ran the entire map 10 times, this should have come to me sooner.
I'm not blind after all, yay