- Beyond These Stars Releases October 16, 2026! - 15 September 2026
Hi all! We're making a very small change to our release date and pushing it by one day. Beyond These Stars will now release on October 16, 2026! If you haven’t already, now is the perfect time to play the demo and get a feel for what's to come. Check out the release date trailer below: Recovering from uncertain times, your Peeps find themselves on the back of Kewa - a lonely Space Whale journeying across the universe. Building a city on the back of a sentient creature comes with its own set of challenges, but as you build your relationship and travel across the galaxy, you'll come across great opportunities for exploration and stable expansion. Meet other species, pursue the needs and wants of your Peeps, and seek the truth about their ancestors and the Space Whales alike. Join the Beyond These Stars Community If you’d like to keep up to date with news, dev blogs, and chat with fellow C…
- Beyond These Stars Releases October 15, 2026! - 20 August 2026
Hi all! We are so, so excited to announce that Beyond These Stars will be releasing on October 15th, 2026! If you haven’t already, now is the perfect time to play the Demo and get a feel for what's to come. Check out the release date trailer below…Recovering from uncertain times, your Peeps find themselves on the back of Kewa - a lonely Space Whale journeying across the universe. Building a city on the back of a sentient creature comes with its own set of challenges, but as you build your relationship and travel across the galaxy, you'll come across great opportunities for exploration and stable expansion. Meet other species, pursue the needs and wants of your Peeps, and seek the truth about their ancestors and the Space Whales alike. Join the Beyond These Stars CommunityIf you’d like to keep up to date with news, dev blogs, and chat with fellow Community members, check out the Beyond T…
- Dev Blog #29 - Keeping Kewa Happy - 12 August 2026
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 Kewa’s happiness plays an important role in also keeping your Peeps happy! What happens if Kewa is unhappy? They will go and eat all the planets you have settled with your Peeps!! Okay no, I'm kidding, they won't do that. Unhappy Kewa does cause some issues for your Peeps that can make life a little bit more difficult. So just what is it that affects Kewa’s happiness?First off, your behaviour and the impact it has on Kewa’s health can directly affect their mood. Even we Humans know that feeling unhe…
- Dev Blog #28 - Settleable Planets - 20 July 2026
Today we’re going to take a look at an exciting part of Beyond These Stars that goes far beyond the demo gameplay. In Beyond These Stars you can go, well, beyond the stars! You may be hesitant to leave the comfort of Kewa but beyond the stars (see what I’m doing here) there are habitable planets for you and your Peeps to settle! Once you unlock the ability to travel with Kewa, you’ll gain access to the Galaxy Map. Initially this will only be partially visible, but as you continue your journey you’ll unlock more and more to explore. Within the Galaxy Map you’ll see nodes containing stars that you can ask Kewa to travel to, and which you can further investigate on your Scout Ship with Jose. These nodes may hold barren planets that cannot support Peep life, space junk, strange objects, trade stations, and perhaps even aliens to befriend! But most importantly, some of those stars will house…
- Dev Blog #27 - Sandbox Mode - 2 July 2026
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 could make the game easier or more difficult. It’s up to you!Certain elements of the game may resonate with some of you more than others, and letting you be able to customise your experience to whatever you’re in the mood for lets you have as much fun as you’d like! Although we do still recommend checking out Story Mode first as it’s structured in a way that lets you learn the systems at a sensible pace (and with optional tutorial helpers!).When it comes to freedom, these are a few things you can play…
- Dev Blog #26 - Our Peep Crew Had A Makeover! - 22 June 2026
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 fit the feel and art style of the game, so we tasked one of our artists, Reyna, with bringing our Peeps to a new level. And boy did she deliver! I asked Reyna what her thought process and inspiration were while designing our new characters: “I read through the lore document Laura had provided me and focused on how best to communicate their personalities through expression, the way they wore their clothing and how they would emote. I was given very detailed physical descriptions of the characters,…
- Dev Blog #25 - Peep Sickness, Death, and Mourning - 28 May 2026
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 wellbeing of the Peeps, and not just their outputs. To avoid your Peeps getting sick, you’ll need to manage your Peeps energy levels. Keep them happy and relaxed with delicious food (potatoes are good, but have you ever had soup?), decorative buildings, and managing how hard Peeps are expected to work. Should your Peeps become sick though, you’ll want to help them recover because if they are sick for too long, the worst may happen.Luckily, one way you can help them recover is by healing them with the new…
- Dev Blog #23 - We're Going On Strike! - 14 April 2026
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. However, we do want to avoid strikes happening at all, and to do that, you’ll need to make sure that your Peeps are well cared for - this includes managing pollution, making sure no Peeps are homeless, and that there are enough resources, such as food, to go around!At the beginning of a strike, you will receive a goal to do a task that relates to the root cause of the strike. This may include building more houses or cleaning up toxic areas. And if the goal is completed, the strike will end early! N…
- Dev Blog #22 - It's time to party! - 18 March 2026
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 Celebrations! Because Peeps like to party too.If a large proportion of your peeps in a single location are above a high Happiness threshold, some of them throw a Celebration! We have a new building, the ‘Fairground’, where Peeps will go and spend their time partying the night away. They’ll also wear cute little masks while doing so! Now, we say they’ll be partying the night away, but in a game design sense, Peeps will go to the fairground between working shifts or if they don't have a job. So your buil…
- Our Plans Are Changing... - 9 March 2026
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. While preparing for what was planned to be an Early Access release, we found that many of our systems were complete enough to meet our requirements for a 1.0 release. After LOTS of discussions in-house, we’ve decided that with a final, strong push on content and gameplay, we’ll be able to have a completed version of the game in 2026.We know you all have been waiting patiently to enter the world of Beyond These Stars, and we're so excited that you'll be able to experience it in a fully realized form,…
- Small bugfixing update for Beyond These Stars demo - 27 November 2025
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 SpaceshipFixed issue where Bridges could be built over Forests where the Forests were too close and would poke throughPrevented building Bridges in a place that would flood them when water was releasedFixed an issue where Woodcutter placement highlighting would be blue right at the start of the gameToxic Tile Cleaners now have a slightly higher priority than other Buildings for getting workers and ResourcesFixed issue where Toxic Tile Cleaners showed incorrect numbers in their work tabRemoved a repeating notification about “Home is running out of Impure Sand” and similarLocation Summary now closes with the Escape key
- Localization patch for Beyond These Stars demo - 21 November 2025
We've just released a small update for the Beyond These Stars demo, to fill in a few missing localizations
- New Demo Coming for Beyond These Stars! - 17 November 2025
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 quite the launch date we had initially envisioned, but after some testing at the end of 2024 and beginning of 2025, we realised that there was so much more we could bring to the game and really make it something special. The team at Balancing Monkey Games have been hunkering down to make some big changes, including game mechanics and in-game rewards. There are new buildings to discover, perks to unlock, and player guides to interact with. Building placement, greenery, and pollution have a greater…
- Manor Lords publisher's space whale city builder gets delayed, but there's a silver lining - 17 November 2025
I'm a sucker for any city builder set on the back of an animal. Blame an upbringing on Terry Pratchett novels for that, I guess, but The Wandering Village tickled all of the right pickles for me, and I was hoping for Beyond These Stars to do the same. Unfortunately, developer Balancing Monkey Games and publisher Hooded Horse have announced that the whale-topping (not like that) strategy sim has been delayed until 2026. It's unfortunate news after a successful Steam Next Fest demo last year, but Balancing Monkey Games has offered us an olive branch in the meantime. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Upcoming city builder from the Manor Lords team has a gigantic, cosmic twist Live on a space whale in new Steam city builder Beyond These Stars
- Beyond These Stars - Developer Diary: Peep Business - 3 February 2025
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 spacefaring species with a love of nature and building things. They are handy and industrious, but prone to chaos. Their highly social and communal lifestyle is blissfully free of the modern trappings of things like “fiat currencies” and “private corporations”. They also really, really like potatoes. (Scientists estimate that the humble potato may comprise up to 95% of the average Peep’s diet.) There are further elements to Peep culture that we’re considering representing as potential in-game mechan…
- Beyond These Stars - Developer Diary: Space Ships, Space Shipping - 29 November 2024
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 very start of the game, Kewa suddenly bolts and travels many light-years away from your home planet. The Peeps are thrust into their journey of galactic exploration a little earlier than they may have anticipated. As a result, you’ll be unlocking the Space Ship Builder fairly early on, and with it the ability to create two early types of ship: 1. Scout Ship Right after your very first conversation with Kewa, you’ll unlock the Solar System View, which shows the position of various things floating abou…
- Upcoming city builder from the Manor Lords team has a gigantic, cosmic twist - 14 October 2024
Beyond These Stars is singing a very different tune to your typical city-building fare. That song is one of the celestial-sized Kewa, an intergalactic space whale ferrying your people across the stars. While Cities Skylines 2 has you focusing on the municipality of your urban utopia, Beyond These Stars tasks you with living a peaceful coexistence with Kewa, while exploring the cosmos for more resources and life. It's a city builder on the grandest scale imaginable, and we've finally learned even more about it. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Live on a space whale in new Steam city builder Beyond These Stars
- Beyond These Stars - Developer Diary: Settleable Planets - 14 October 2024
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 of loneliness, this longing to reconnect with others of their species, forms a spiritual parallel between the journey of the Peeps and that of their Space Whale companion, Kewa. The Peeps of Beyond These Stars continue a legacy of rediscovery that began in the game’s prequel, emerging from generations of (literally) sheltered life to rebuild civilisation among the deserted interplanetary colonies of their Ancestors. Kewa is similarly adrift among the cosmos, long separated from the rest of their kin…
- Beyond These Stars - Developer Diary: Player Feedback & EA Sneak Peeks - 3 September 2024
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. Some commonly requested features included things we’d already planned, but were somewhat undecided on. Some had been implemented to varying degrees in internal development builds, and some were truly impressive ideas we’d not thought of before. We can’t talk about everything here, of course - but here are some small things that we can address. Composting Composting received some attention for its perceived imbalance. Players pointed to the sheer scale of plank production needed to generate enough…
- Beyond These Stars in Tiny Teams fest! - 8 August 2024
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 August 13/14 to catch some Beyond These Stars: Central European Time (UTC +1): Tue, 13 Aug at 2:00 pm - 5:00pm Pacific Time (UTC -7): Tue, 13 Aug at 6:00 am - 9:00am NZ Standard Time (UTC +12): Wed, 14 Aug at 1:00am - 4:00am (yes, fellow Kiwis and Aussies: we are once again cursed with short end of the stick when it comes to “prime time” streams. But keep an eye out for the VOD!) The Tiny Teams festival itself will be live on Steam from now until August 15th. If you’re a fan of indie games and passion…
