Beyond These Stars News

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/

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.



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 mechanics. This diary will mostly focus on the basics of what keeps them ticking. We’re constantly iterating on the finer details of how Peeps organise themselves and their society, so some details might be subject to change!



We’ve briefly touched upon Peep Happiness in a previous diary; it’s a mechanic that influences various things from productivity to, uh, reproductivity. Happiness goes up when Peeps are relaxing, eating, drinking, or being near decorative buildings. It goes down while Peeps are working, and dips even further if they pass through a polluted tile (the heavier the pollution, the greater the rate that happiness decreases).

If a Peep is unhappy enough, they will stop working and immediately seek ways to address their poor mood - so basically, keeping your Peeps happy means they’ll work longer.

To help track Peep happiness, we’ve added a graph to show the player what’s caused changes to a particular Peep’s happiness at a given time:



And a new happiness overlay to show the happiness gain & loss from a tile or building:

(Mousing over a tile/building gives a list of factors contributing to happiness.)

In essence: ignoring the happiness of your Peeps risks the slowdown or cessation of work, causing bottlenecks in production. There will be other factors impacting Peep productivity, which we are still working on - you'll find out about these later!



Peeps will age throughout the course of the game. Since players might value a Peep primarily for their capacity to be productive and build up your city (it’s a cruel world, isn’t it?), they can be understood as being of either working age or non-working age.

There are two types of non-working Peeps: Children and Elders. You can tell if a Peep falls into either category from the relevant icons, or from their models, which are unique from regular working peeps: Elders have grey hair, while Children are much smaller.



Children spawn only when there are empty accommodation slots for them to occupy, and spend their days relaxing and going to school. They grow up within several minutes of real-time gameplay. Conversely, Peeps become elderly once they reach the last several minutes of their lifespan, putting down their tools and spending the last of their days (minutes?) relaxing.



Peeps can subsist perfectly well on basic foods, like potatoes and other crops - but they sure do appreciate a well-rounded, home-cooked meal.

[h2]Recipes[/h2]
Once you start settling new planets and gaining access to a broader variety of ingredients, you’ll unlock a variety of buildings that let you process them. Let’s take a look at the Kitchen!



Meals supplied by the Kitchen building are an example of a processed, more complex food that gives additional effects once consumed: more happiness and energy, and an impact on temperature (hot meals might help with cold weather, but a cold meal when it’s freezing would negatively impact a Peep).

There are several different meal recipes that can be created through different combinations of ingredients: in the screenshot above, Eggs and Milk combine to make Puddings (and some Food Waste by-product). We don’t tell you what these recipes are, so you’re encouraged to play around with them and find out!



As you travel through the galaxy, your Peeps (and Kewa too, of course) will experience fluctuations in the temperature of their environment. If things get too hot or too cold, your Peeps will start to find it harder to function.

Luckily, Peeps are perfectly capable weavers and tailors (those pink and blue jumpsuits had to come from somewhere, after all). Exploring other planets leads you to discover resources like Cotton seeds, and Wool can be produced by constructing a Pasture building on a planet that is home to sheep.



These raw materials are then taken to the Weaver building to be converted to fabrics, which the Tailor building can then use to create either Cold Weather or Warm Weather Clothing. These offer some relief to Peeps suffering from the effects of harsh weather, and offer some fun variety to Peep models. No shade to the classic default jumpsuit.

A lot of fun designs were considered for these clothing types! Here’s a glimpse of some:

(WIP and concept art of different clothing types.)

That’s about it for this developer diary! As mentioned above, we’re constantly working on Peep behaviours, so some of the above may be subject to change (and not necessarily exhaustive) - we just wanted to take the chance to get up close and personal.

Also! In case you missed it, check out Tom’s blog post from last month about the visual design of Kewa. It’s a very interesting read, and full of WIPs and concept art showing how our beloved Space Whale has evolved over time.

🔸 Do you have any burning questions about the Peeps? Want to know more about their lore, how they walk without legs, or how spicy they like their food? Our community's always coming up with the strangest theories over on our Discord - come join the fun!

See you next month!

- Lia

 If you'd like to keep up to date with the latest Beyond These Stars news and announcements:
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https://store.steampowered.com/app/2295060/Beyond_These_Stars/

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.


[h2]🚀 Space Ships[/h2]
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:

[h3]1. Scout Ship[/h3]

Right after your very first conversation with Kewa, you’ll unlock the Solar System View, which shows the position of various things floating about in space: Kewa, the local star, and various celestial objects (if any).



You won’t be able to properly identify these objects until you investigate them with a Scout Ship. We won’t go into detail here about what kinds of objects there are, but as an example: investigation by a Scout Ship will tell you whether a planet is able to be settled or not.

[h3]2. Trade Ship[/h3]

You’ll be needing these to ferry supplies to and from Kewa, and you’ll probably end up building a fair few of them throughout the game! We’ll talk more about shipping below.



And we of course allow you the satisfaction of pressing the big shiny launch button once your ship’s ready to go. How could we not??

[h2] Space Ports & Settlement Ships[/h2]

In Before We Leave, ships would travel between planets; but in Beyond These Stars they shuttle between Space Ports, giving players greater control over their destinations. Space Ports can have up to four Landing Pads, with each pad able to accommodate one ship at a time. Space Ships cannot land on Kewa or on a Planet without - you guessed it! - a Landing Pad.

(Space Port with multiple Landing Pads, and a Spaceship Builder in the foreground)

How, then, is the player able to land and get started on a new planet?

The Settlement Ship is designed for exactly that. You don’t build it via the Spaceship Builder; instead, it is an upgraded form of the Home Spaceship. The “upgrade” here is that the Home Spaceship’s ability to produce a consistent supply of vital resources has been removed to make way for larger storage, and a Landing Pad attachment which permits it to act as a Space Port.

The Settlement Ship is also the only type of ship that can land without a Landing Pad, but once it has landed, it won’t be able to take off again until you’ve built at least one Space Port in the area. You don’t want to leave those Peeps stranded!

(Note the Landing Pad popping out on the left!)

It’s worth noting another divergence here from Before We Leave, for those who are familiar with that system. In BWL, you would land your ship with some resources and peeps, and that was that; you would have to then spend some time building up your town before it could be connected to the broader trade infrastructure between your various settlements.

In Beyond These Stars, because you have immediate access to a Landing Pad (and thus the ability to ferry ships to and from your new settlement), and because these planets are designed to be lacking in some of the basic resources needed to be fully self-sufficient, your immediate priorities have changed. Instead, once you land on your very first planet, we want to encourage you to familiarise yourself with our – drumroll, please –


[h2]📦 Shipping System[/h2]

Your initial shipping experience will be in pursuit of establishing yourself in foreign lands, building up basic infrastructure like wood cutters and water pumps, and bridges. Eventually, though, that flow is reversed: once your new settlement gets going, and you gain access to the unique resources offered by the new planet, you’ll want to start shipping those back to Kewa to unlock new buildings and materials.

We believe that managing an interstellar network of resources should be rewarding - but as you can see, there’s the potential for things to get all kinds of confusing and complex here. This is where a well designed shipping system comes into play!

[h3]Manual vs Automated Shipping[/h3]

There are two modes of shipping, each offering different benefits to the player.

Manual shipping gives you a high degree of control over exactly what, where, and when resources are being sent. It’s good for when you need a specific, finite amount of a resource (I need exactly 20 wood and 15 glass over there!), and for emergency situations (stop what you’re doing and give me 20 wood and 15 glass, stat!).

Automated shipping is more of a “set and forget”, and is better suited to maintaining an ongoing supply of a resource. It’s more-or-less equivalent to what was called ‘smart shipping’ in BWL, only much easier to use and understand.

(A glimpse at the automated shipping interface in System View.)

In Before We Leave, when we first introduced smart shipping it was after players had grown accustomed to making use of an intermediary port when shipping from planet A > island A to planet B > island B. This led to a lot of confusion when they assumed that this was also how smart shipping worked. (spoiler alert: it wasn’t.)

In Beyond These Stars, though, we hope to avoid this situation entirely in a few ways: by having automated shipping available from the very beginning; by making the UI a lot cleaner and easier to understand; and through this new method of shipping directly between Space Ports instead of between islands or planets.

Additionally, the new shipping algorithm is much more effective at figuring out what to do and where to direct resources based on what the player says they want.

The new Space Ports should also help address feedback that Before We Leave’s shipping felt “slow”. Congestion will be less of a problem considering the ability to build up to four Landing Pads per port; and having Trade Ships travel directly between Space Ports will be much quicker for trade.

(Also - switching between Local View & System View is quite seamless!)

[h3]Further notes on shipping[/h3]
A couple of things that we want to note early to avoid any confusion. Currently, shipping works only with Resources; although your initial settlements will always include ten Peeps to get you started, you cannot specifically transport Peeps between locations.

Also - and this is mostly for the Before We Leave players - we want to flag that at this stage sea ships won’t be included in our Early Access release. We're still mulling over if and how we want to include them. For a variety of reasons at the moment they don't have much use, and their absence shouldn’t pose practical issues considering the direct Space Port-to-Space Port shipping system.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That’s all for this development diary! Transport and logistics are very important, but so often very overlooked; they can sometimes threaten to make-or-break player engagement once you get deep enough into games like ours. We want to make resource management stimulating and hands-on without it being tedious and repetitive, and nailing this is something we really hope to get right during Early Access!

As always, we welcome any and all feedback and questions; and if you’d like to chat to us more directly, do consider joining our Discord.

In our next Dev Diary we’ll be talking about Animals, Food Production & Clothing! Look forward to seeing it next month.

- Lia, Community Manager