Beyond These Stars News

Kia ora everyone 👋

Since November last year we've been writing dev blogs every fortnight(ish) to talk about our work on Beyond These Stars, and to talk about our day to day lives at the studio too. I've decided to link all of them in this post so you can check them out! Expect brand spankin' new posts coming soon though, starting with our Creative Director Sam.

[h3]November 2022[/h3]
Dev Blog #1 with Sam, Creative Director Dev Blog #2: It's Time To Get Together! with Anna, Managing Director
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[h3]December 2022[/h3]
Dev Blog #3: Mushy Peas And Haiku Edition with Tom, Lead Artist Dev Blog #4: Everything is Content with Producer and Social Media Manager Sarah
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[h3]January 2023[/h3]
Dev Blog #5: Into The Clouds with Lead Programmer & Technical Artist Isaac
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[h3]February 2023[/h3]
Dev Blog #6: As Old As Us with Narrative Designer/Community Manager Emily (that's me!) Dev Blog #7: Game.Isfun = True with Game Designer & Programmer Mereana
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[h3]March 2023[/h3]
IWD Blog: Why Should Business Be Like War? with Anna Dev Blog 8: Our Quality QA with Nina, Quality Assurance & Player Support
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Alright gang, that's the archive done! I'm looking forward to posting fresh new dev blogs for you all soon.

Oh, another thing - if you'd prefer to not manually check our website or these Steam forums for our dev blogs, I write a newsletter every few weeks! Sign up here to get Beyond These Stars news to your inbox. I don't spam, promise!

- Emily, Community Manager

Kia ora koutou katoa and greetings everyone!

I’m Emily, the Community Manager/Narrative Designer for Balancing Monkey Games. We made Before We Leave and now we’re working on its sequel Beyond These Stars, a city-builder on the back of a space whale called Kewa.

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[h2]INTRODUCTIONS[/h2]
In case you’re not familiar with us, I wanted to give you a bit of background - we’re a small indie studio based in Dunedin (Ōtepoti), New Zealand (Aotearoa). There are eight full time people in the studio with a handful of contractors helping us make Beyond These Stars. So we’re not as small as we used to be (we made Before We Leave with about half as many people!). All of us are massive nerds, love nature, and we’re working our butts off to make the best game possible for you all.

[h2]ABOUT BEYOND THESE STARS[/h2]
“Journey on the back of the space whale Kewa, building a city for your people as you travel across the galaxy seeking purpose and answers, and developing deep relationships with the universe around you.”

We began discussing a potential sequel to Before We Leave in 2020, and began full time development in 2022. It’s been an interesting journey so far - we do blog posts every two weeks so you’ll see bits and pieces of our journey and our thoughts about it as we go. I’ve posted quite a few already over on the Before We Leave Steam forums but I’ll be posting them here too for you all to read :)

[h2]EARLY ACCESS[/h2]
While we have a strong vision for how Beyond These Stars looks, feels and plays, part of our vision is getting feedback from you all about what’s great, what’s not so great, and where you feel like things could be improved. We’re still figuring out what public testing and our roadmapping looks like, but I will let you know about that when it’s here!

[h2]TALKING TO US[/h2]
So since we’re in a weird timezone, and we do a four day work week between 9am to 5pm, communicating can sometimes be a bit difficult. We'll endeavour to respond here as quickly as we can, but expect a delay. If you need to get in touch with us quickly, I strongly recommend joining our Discord!

[h2]TALKING TO YOU[/h2]
As a community manager I value transparency and sincerity - I’ll always try to give you as much information as possible! Communicating that through words alone can be a bit tough sometimes, so we do occasional Twitch streams. They’re currently on hiatus but returning in the next few months! If you’re super keen to see and hear everything we’re doing, chuck us a follow on our socials. You can find all of them over here.

Anyway, thanks for reading! I’m looking forward to talking to you all more 🙂
- Emily, Community Manager

2021’s Before We Leave was a chill, planet-hopping city builder with the occasional space whale who might hoover up your world’s hexagonal tiles. Now developer Balancing Monkey is back for another go at spacefaring management, but this time your city is built on top of a space whale, rather than being terrorised by one. Their follow-up, Beyond These Stars, will be hitting early access on PC later this year.

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