One of the most important things you need to be taking care of during your travels in Beyond These Stars is not just your Peeps, but Kewa themself! Kewa is a sentient being, a giant Space Whale with needs and wants of their own. We learn this close to the start of the game when Kewa ‘zoots’ through space and takes the Peeps far from their home planet. A unique part of our game design is that Ke…
Sheep and Cows on Kewa? All mineable resources? NO RIVER? Absolutely bonkers. Nope, not bonkers. Introducing Sandbox Mode! With Sandbox Mode, you will have complete control over what is available to you on Kewa that would normally only be available on the habitable plants you discover throughout the Galaxy in Story Mode. Some of the selections you decide from when creating your Sandbox game cou…
We received a lot of amazing feedback from the Beyond These Stars Demo (and yes, we were listening 👀), especially when it came to our Peep Character portraits. So we went back to the drawing board, reworked, refined and reimagined them. Which means that now… it’s time to introduce the new and improved Peep Portraits! A lot of the feedback focused on how our original Peep Portraits didn’t quite…
Life on Kewa can’t always be happiness and potatoes! Peeps can celebrate, Peeps can Strike, but also… Peeps can get sick, pass away, and mourn. Let’s find out more about each of these new behaviours that will roll out in our full game. Sickness is a mechanic we designed to give Peep wellbeing a greater impact and provide more things for you to consider, encouraging players to think of the wellb…
We’re going on Strike! Just kidding! It’s actually the Peeps going on strike! Let’s take a look, shall we? When a high enough percentage of your Peeps are unhappy enough, they will start a strike. And just like in real life, some of your production lines will stop while the Peeps are striking. But don’t worry - not ALL of your Peeps will strike at once, so not all of your production will stop.…
While the team at Balancing Monkey Games and you, our lovely community, have been celebrating the switch to a 1.0 Launch, we think we should get the Peeps involved in the celebrations too because there’s no party like a party on the back of a giant space whale! We’ve been working on some new Peep behaviours, and we’ll share one of those with you today. If you haven’t guessed already… Peep Celeb…
Since our last Dev Blog, A LOT has changed, and a fair amount of these changes were shown in our most recent Demo. But we are about to announce the biggest change of all… We will be skipping over Early Access and going straight to a 1.0 release for Beyond These Stars, THIS YEAR! (Cue the Peep Celebrations!) 🎉 You folks may have a lot of questions, and we totally get that, so let us explain. Wh…
We've just released a small update to the Beyond These Stars Demo (version 0.1.1368) with the following fixes: · Fixed issue where Storage Sheds would fail to get Resources for construction if the Resources had to come from the Home Spaceship · Fixed issue where Bridges could be built over Forests where the Forests were too close and would poke through · Prevented building Bridges in a place th…
Hey everyone! Did someone say… brand new Beyond These Stars demo?? 👀 (VIDEO EMBED) For those who have been following the development of Beyond These Stars, thank you for sticking with us! We’re going to be taking a little more time to make sure the Early Access release is truly amazing, so we’ve had to make the hard decision to delay Early Access back into 2026. We understand that this is not…
Welcome to our first developer diary of 2025! So far, we’ve looked at things of a galactic scope; namely planets , and how to manage transport & shipping between them. Today we’re going back to our local roots and checking out our quirky little denizens, the Peeps. 🧍♂️ Peep culture For those less familiar with the lore of Before We Leave (our first game), Peeps are a curious, human-adjacent s…
So you’ve travelled to a new system, and found your first habitable planet - now what? Any spacefaring society demands a robust interstellar infrastructure, and some solid logistics to keep the wheels of production turning. Let’s take a look at how the player will be getting from Kewa to new lands, and how they’ll manage a growing network of trade between these places. 🚀 Space Ships At the ver…
We’ve just returned from a busy stint at PAX Australia - but today we’re dropping the elevator pitch to go deep into the yet-unrevealed details of a significant feature of Beyond These Stars : settleable planets! 🌌 Settleable planets Space can get lonely - particularly when you’re a hapless Peep emerging from decades of life in shelters, or floating through parts unknown. This mutual feeling o…
Hey peeps! It’s been a couple of months now since we first released the Beyond These Stars demo into the wild. We’ve already talked a little bit about our feelings around Next Fest - see: this blog post , and our all-hands roundtable stream - but now that we’ve had some time to digest this into meaningful action, we thought we’d address some of your feedback for the demo in a bit more detail.…
Celebrating small creators making the next "big" thing We are quite proud to be part of this year’s Tiny Teams festival, celebrating big things coming from small studios! Tiny Teams connects solo developers and micro studios with content creators through the Yogscast network - and we’re lucky to be benefiting from some of that coverage ourselves. 📺 Tune in to the Yogscast Twitch stream on Augu…
Build a city on the back of a Space Whale and learn to coexist as you journey through the stars. Manage intricate supply chains and the needs of your people as you build outposts, meet aliens, and uncover the mysteries of the universe.
Build a city on the back of a Space Whale and learn to coexist as you journey through the stars. Manage intricate supply chains and the needs of your people as you build outposts, meet aliens, and uncover the mysteries of the universe.
Patch Notes Version 0.1.30 Controls · Added a Movement Sensitivity slider to Options -> Camera, which affects the speed of WASD/screen edge movement · Added an extra item to the Place Building information key which prompts you to use [ ] to rotate buildings when placing Localisation · Fixed the fonts used for Simplified Chinese/Traditional Chinese/Japanese/Korean in the Strange Transmitter Prev…
Patch Notes Version 0.1.28 High priority fixes · Fixed an issue preventing clicking on buttons in the Main Menu if your computer has a touchscreen Terrain generation · Fixed an issue that could spawn a Resource Deposit on the river blockage · Fixed an issue that could spawn Forests on the same tiles as the Mysterious Ruin · Fixed an issue that could report a Resource Deposit outside breathable…
A fix for crashes We’ve been working around the clock to fix the crashing issues that some of you have reported, and have just pushed a patch that we hope will address the cause. We are still working on fixing other issues, but wanted to get this fix out ASAP! How to get the latest version To ensure you’re playing the latest version of the game, restart Steam - or right click on the game -> Pro…
Exciting news: our demo is now live! A Significant Milestone The demo for Beyond These Stars is now live! As part of our participation in Steam NextFest, you can start playing the demo right now . We Want to Hear From You! We would really love to hear your feedback after you play the demo. We've created a subforum specifically for demo feedback and discussion, which you can visit here . For any…
Hey peeps! Earlier this month, we hit Twitch for the first time since 2022 to discuss what we’ve been up to with Beyond These Stars. Our narrative designer Emily quizzed creative director Sam on the last two years of development and took us all down memory lane with such highlights as: · Some of the very first concept art of BTS · Forbidden anthropomorphic office appliance romance · A very very…
Hey peeps! We're proud to be participating in the 2024 Women’s Day Sale , organised by WINGS, which funds indie games by women and gender diverse teams. Two years ago, for IWD 2022, we published a blog post featuring words from each of the women here at Balancing Monkey Games. We’ve since hired two more women - Nina , our QA Analyst, and myself - so we thought we’d update things this year! Read…
Hi everyone! Beyond These Stars and other games published by Hooded Horse are all featured at the Hooded Horse Publisher Sale. Come check it out! Hooded Horse Strategy Publisher Sale
Hello everyone! I’ve been away from you all spending time being the Narrative Designer of Beyond These Stars, instead of your Community Manager. Now it’s time for me to swap back, so here I am, writing a post for my favourite community (I am not biased, it’s a simple fact, ok?!) The Building Showcase I’ve been working on a treat for you all - a Building Showcase! This includes tidbits of inform…
Kia ora and happy May! Beyond These Stars has taken an interesting turn in development lately - it’s begun feeling less like a prototype and more like a fully fleshed out game. Sometimes this feeling can come suddenly, like a light switch turning on, or sometimes it can be something slow and steady that you notice suddenly. For me, I’d say it feels like the latter of those two things! Before we…
Kia ora everyone! Our new dev blog is out - for all the juicy details, please hop over to our website read it . For those of you who want a summary (and believe me it is a summary), read on: Crafting the UI With city builders and other simulation games, the UI can often be a "make or break'' moment for them. MJ, Sam, and Tom have been working *very* hard for quite a while now to make it as slic…
Hey gang! I'm popping in to post the most recent dev blog from Sam, our creative director. If you're keen to see specifics on what we've been working on in terms of mechanics and systems, this is the dev blog for you! Hello again! We’ve cycled through everyone at the company doing Dev Blogs, and so it’s come back to me, Sam, your friendly neighbourhood Creative Director. Lots has been happening…
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Announcements are the developer’s own posts to the game’s Steam news feed: updates and their patch notes, in-game events, releases and sales. The important ones are marked on the players chart.