Beyond These Stars News

[p]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… [/p][p][/p][p]Peep Celebrations! Because Peeps like to party too.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]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 buildings will still keep running during a celebration![/p][p][/p][p]And, each time a celebration occurs, your Peeps will receive a bonus, making life on Kewa just a little bit easier. This includes production, movement, and sickness bonuses.

We want you to see happiness and something worth striving for, rather than just another meter you need to keep filled.[/p][p]
[/p][p]Celebrations are just one of the new systems we’ve added for a 1.0 release. Just like player actions impacting Kewa, we make our Peeps act differently depending on player behaviour too! It’s a way of acknowledging and rewarding players who have put a good amount of effort into caring for their Peeps, beyond the minimum required to keep your city functioning, and we’re excited to see how you experience celebrations once Beyond These Stars has released![/p][p][/p][p]If you want to keep up to date with these little Dev blogs and join the discussion, be sure to head over to our Community Discord!

🔗: https://discord.com/invite/balancingmonkeygames[/p][p] [/p][p]
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[p]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…
[/p][p]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!) 🎉
[/p][p]You folks may have a lot of questions, and we totally get that, so let us explain.
[/p][p]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.[/p][p][/p][p]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, rather than just a chapter of it, with a 1.0 release.
[/p][p]Here's a little sneak peek at some of the things you'll see in 1.0 that you wouldn't have seen in the initial Early Access Launch:[/p][p][/p]

• [p]You’ll have the full Galaxy to explore on the back of Kewa[/p]
• [p]A bunch of new complex endgame buildings[/p]
• [p]Several new mechanics that make interactions with your peeps much more interesting[/p]
• [p]More space to build your Peep civilisation[/p]
• [p]Spaceships and Planets for your further exploration[/p]
• [p]More planets to settle (oop, planets to settle?? 👀)[/p]
• [p]The full fleshed out story of Kewa and the Peeps[/p]
• [p]Aliens to meet, quests to take, and lore to discover![/p]
• [p]And so much more![/p]

[p][/p][p]We’ll be bringing back Dev Blogs very soon, so you can follow along the journey with us to 1.0. We are so SO excited to share those changes and what's coming with you. ❤️
[/p][p]Of course, this is some Kewa-sized news, so if you have any questions, feel free to join our Community Discord and ask away![/p][p]🔗: https://discord.com/invite/balancingmonkeygames[/p][p] [/p][p]
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[p]We've just released a small update to the Beyond These Stars Demo (version 0.1.1368) with the following fixes:[/p]

• [p]Fixed issue where Storage Sheds would fail to get Resources for construction if the Resources had to come from the Home Spaceship[/p]
• [p]Fixed issue where Bridges could be built over Forests where the Forests were too close and would poke through[/p]
• [p]Prevented building Bridges in a place that would flood them when water was released[/p]
• [p]Fixed an issue where Woodcutter placement highlighting would be blue right at the start of the game[/p]
• [p]Toxic Tile Cleaners now have a slightly higher priority than other Buildings for getting workers and Resources[/p]
• [p]Fixed issue where Toxic Tile Cleaners showed incorrect numbers in their work tab[/p]
• [p]Removed a repeating notification about “Home is running out of Impure Sand” and similar[/p]
• [p]Location Summary now closes with the Escape key[/p]

[p]We've just released a small update for the Beyond These Stars demo, to fill in a few missing localizations[/p]

Hey everyone!

Did someone say… brand new Beyond These Stars demo?? 👀

[previewyoutube](VIDEO EMBED)[/previewyoutube]
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 impact on gameplay, and core systems have been refined. Player actions have a more noticeable impact on Kewa, affecting not just your relationship with the Space Whale, but the look and behaviour of their biome too. ✨

Be sure to download the new demo and experience the changes for yourself!

As we continue to work hard on Beyond These Stars and bringing you Early Access, you can follow the development through our Steam forums, our social media pages (BlueSky, Instagram, TikTok), and Discord, where our new Community Manager, Bre, will be sharing little sneak peeks!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2295060/Beyond_These_Stars/