Beyond These Stars News

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 early model of Kewa (eerily smooth)
  

More importantly, we got to chat live with our community and answer some of your questions. Without further ado - here they are!

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[h2]Where did the idea of having a whale as the animal in BTS come from? [/h2]
Sam: Well, settle in kids, it’s story time. In Dunedin every year, there’s a midwinter carnival - has been for a few years at least - and people parade around the centre of town with all these big lanterns on poles, and dancing, and all the rest of it. In 2016 (I think?)...2017? Something like that - I was just starting to get back into game dev, just as a hobby, and we went along to the midwinter carnival with my kids for the first time. And one of these giant parade float lantern things that people were holding up was a great big whale with a bunch of skyscrapers on its back.

I imagine it was a commentary about us taking over the natural environment and all the rest of that. But I looked at it, and I turned to Anna and I went, “I’ve got a great idea for a video game!”

The very first game I tried making as a hobby was effectively what Beyond These Stars is - but at the time it was too big; I was just learning Unity, just getting back into it. So I abandoned that and made something else, and then I made something else, and then that one didn’t work out so I pivoted and turned it into what became Before We Leave. So now we’ve come full circle and we’re actually making the game which is the game I wanted to make back in 2016 (or 2017, whenever it was).

(editor’s note - we also talked about this in an earlier blog post; read it here!)

[h2]What was Before We Leave originally meant to be?[/h2]
Emily: Before We Leave was meant to be a strategy game, right? Or was it always meant to be a city builder?

Sam: So the game I started making that I abandoned and then repurposed into Before We Leave was going to be a strategy game; but Before We Leave was always going to be a city builder.

Emily: I feel like we have really, really early footage of what you were making in….2017? In a video that I made.

Sam: Yeah. It was called Pax et Belli which is Latin for “Peace and War”, and the idea was…it was going to be kind of like Civilization, but playable in half an hour.

(for those curious, you can find remnants of Pax et Belli’s development in our old articles on our website - here’s one such post, and here’s another where Sam talks about pivoting towards what would become Before We Leave)

[h2]In Beyond These Stars, you’re not actually digging into Kewa.[/h2]
Sam: We actually have taken quite a few pains to say that the thing that you’re on and in particular digging into is not Kewa; it’s a layer of debris on top of Kewa. So no mining an actual living being here at all, thank you.

We had a lot of discussions about this. When we were like “hey, you can build on a whale, and that’ll be really cool!” and then it went kind of “....oh…but that means you’ll be digging into their skin, and…ew?” So we were like oh no, what can we do? And decided that that’s all a layer of debris on top of Kewa. You can’t build on Kewa’s skin, or mine into it or anything. Because ew.

Emily: I feel like I wrote a line of dialogue, and we had some people test the game, and someone was like “why am I digging into the whale?” and I was like, no no no no no no that’s not what I wanted that word to mean! In hindsight very funny, at the time - super embarrassing.

But yes. The eating Kewa memes - objectively hilarious, please don’t stop.



[h2]What’s on the cards for 2024?[/h2]
Sam: Apparently we've got to make a video game. Um. So that’s what we’re doing.

We're working really hard on getting in everything that we want in for Early Access; starting to head into the phase of planning out marketing and release dates and all the rest of it - and still putting features in, and polishing and fixing bugs and all the rest of it.

As was announced recently on socials, we’ve brought in a few more people for private play testing on our Discord, and we'll probably be adding another few groups of those in the next few weeks and months, just to get fresh eyes on the game each time.

Secretly, yes, we do have an early access release time frame, but we are not saying what it is yet. Sorry! We haven't fully approved it with the publisher and we haven't picked everything, and you know, the last thing we want to do is give you a date and then go “oh, soz, had to change it!”

So yeah - we're pretty careful about giving out dates when we're not *absolutely* certain.

(By one of our playtesters, GumGumKingKonGun)

[h2]What are you looking forward to with Early Access?[/h2]
Sam: I am so looking forward to getting lots and lots of people in front of the game. It's going to be so good. I mean, we're so proud of what we're building: it's really cool, it looks beautiful, it plays really nice. Unlike Before We Leave it's got a great story in it - but not too much, it’s still a city builder and not a narrative game.

It’s just going to be really good and we’re really looking forward not just to showing you what we’ve been working on, but getting everyone’s feedback. With Before We Leave, technically it wasn’t Early Access or anything, but we did seven or eight content updates. Getting players’ feedback and adding in stuff that players come up with is really exciting and lots of fun, so I’m really looking forward to that.

[h2]What will the challenges be in Beyond These Stars?[/h2]
Sam: In Before We Leave there are the Gremlins and the Sphinx and so on. This time around, we’re not putting anything like that in the game. The intention with BWL was that it was going to be a nonviolent game - and from a certain point of view it still is, but we ended up taking that description out of the Steam page ‘cos people were like uh…there’s whales that eat my planets…and giant laser turrets that blow up my buildings…this isn’t really a nonviolent game. And we were like, you know what - you’re right.

This time around we are trying to actually be nonviolent. That’s not to say there’s not any conflict; I mean, you are literally travelling on the back of an intelligent being who is allowing you to be there, and you have a relationship with them - and that relationship is not necessarily going to be a good one. And even if you’re getting along, they have their own wants and desires and dreams, and they aren’t always going to mesh with what the peeps want, or what you as the player wants.

And y’know, there are aliens, and none of them are going to be mean and nasty and sheep with laser guns, but again, they’re not necessarily going to want the same things you want, or the same things Kewa wants. So you’ve got to navigate your relationships a bit. And the other driver is that you’ve got to keep your peeps happy, you’ve got to keep them fed, you’ve got to explore…there are hazards that you will find in exploring the galaxy, and all that sort of thing.



[h2]Why is the sun so small?[/h2]
Emily: Someone asked something about the suns in the solar systems, because they looked a little bit small. Those were from a very, very, very early version of the game - they look a little bit more proportional now. Sam, can you talk about that?

Sam: I mean, the suns are still kind of small if you’re basing them on our universe…we want to find a balance between on the one hand, wanting space to feel big but on the other hand, everything needing to fit on one screen, and to actually be able to see things and all the rest of it. For example, the sun is there because it provides light and warmth and so on, but aside from that you can’t click on it, you can’t visit it, you can’t do anything with it; so from that point of view we actually made it so that it’s a bit smaller than suns are in our universe, because it’s not as important, I guess you could say, from a gameplay point of view. But yeah - we’re still playing around with the sizes of things and all that sort of thing.

Emily: There’s a great talk by the people who made Outer Wilds that discussed the difficulties of making a solar system. It seems really simple on paper, but then you do it and you’re like, oh no, this is really hard. I’m very lucky to be the words girly because I think if I was presented with that challenge I would simply go into the sea. But y’all have done a great job (aggressively Australian accent) ~down in Dunedin~.

[h2]Is Benedict Nichols back to do the music?[/h2]
Lia: I can confirm that yes, he is!

[h2]What is the speed of an unladen Kewa? [/h2]
Sam: Seven and a half.

Emily: You heard the man.

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The whole stream was a fair bit of of chaotic fun, courtesy of Emily’s incredible slideshow skills and her uncanny ability to impersonate ‘Strayan pilots. Watch the VOD here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9xqdnGrUKg

We’ve also just uploaded a full schedule for the next few months of streams on our Twitch page. Our next one will be on Friday 10th May, with streams continuing at either a weekly or fortnightly cadence (check the schedule to be sure).

In general though, when it comes to game updates, our most frequently updated channels are:

• Our Discord - for regular bite sized stuff (where we are just starting to share weekly development updates) - this is also where we’ll be posting links to anything significant, and keep people reminded about streams as well!
  
• Our website for more longer-form updates; subscribe to our newsletter if you’d like a (roughly) monthly digest on what we’ve been up to!
  

Until release, you can expect the above channels to have much more activity than our Steam updates!

Here are some of our most recent dev blogs:

That's Even More Things: Dev Blog #18 A Brief Look Into Writing Kewa: Dev Blog #17 All About Kewa: Dev Blog #16 Testing: More Than Just Bugs! Dev Blog #15 Achievement Unlocked! Dev Blog #14

…and more on our website!

Looking forward to seeing you on Twitch in the coming months! ❤

- Lia, Community Manager

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 on to hear our thoughts and feelings about the industry, and how video games have impacted our lives.

[h3]Nina (QA Analyst)[/h3]

My first game related memory actually isn’t of playing a game - it's of eating an ice block. As a child, there was an ice block company that ran a competition to win a Gameboy Colour and Pokemon Silver - the latest Pokemon game. Pokemon had been an obsession of mine since I first saw it on TV, and boy did I want to catch my own. We entered, and I won. The prize arrived one morning before school. I don’t remember how that day went, but I remember racing to find new batteries, asking my mum to play for me while I had to do chores, and sneaking my Gameboy into primary school.

But one thing was missing from that game for me, and it wasn’t something I realised until I got Pokemon Crystal one year. Being able to play as a girl, it almost blew my mind. Sure, I could play as a girl in the Barbie games I played, but this was different. The character on the screen felt like me, a collection of pixels that represented me. Being different to the boys I played Pokemon with in the schoolyard, I always felt like an outsider. But within the games I played, I could fit right in.

A few years ago I bought the game Miitopia for the Switch. This was another time I felt strongly represented - I could create a character with a lazy eye! Being able to dress my character as I wish I could myself, the character becomes an extension of my being. There is something about being able to make characters that feel like me that makes me think “I am allowed to be here”.

Being neurodivergent, I always struggled fitting in, but I had much the same feelings of inclusion when joining the Balancing Monkey Games team. There were other women in the studio; I’m allowed to be here. I never get treated any differently to my co-workers, and there is a weight that is lifted off when you don’t have to worry about the impact of your gender on opportunities within your workplace.

My hopes for the future is to see more diversity within the games we play. Gender, physical attributes, clothing. We all deserve a way to express ourselves and feel included. We are all allowed to be here.


[h3]Lia (Community Manager)[/h3]

My (sometimes intense) relationship with video games started when I was very young, where I would find myself playing Tekken on my cousin’s PlayStation until my fingertips were red and raw. Alarmed at how thoroughly sucked in I was to such an unbecoming hobby, my parents forbade me from owning my own console until many years later - which particularly frustrated me as none of my girl friends in the 90s had access to video games themselves (and my options for mooching were therefore limited). I often had to content myself with forcing my younger sister into playing the very basic pen-and-paper games I’d make for us to play. It was a weird time for women in games, occupying an awkward space where we’d felt like outliers or hangers-on to a culture and industry that wasn’t truly “ours”.

This feeling of being an “outsider” to an already niche area meant the thought of actually working in the industry was something I’d never considered possible - a feeling that I know many of my peers share. It’s a little funny, then, that working in games has made me feel like I can be more “myself” at work than in any other job. This is particularly true about how I feel at Balancing Monkey Games, where six out of our ten employees are women (!)

A lot has been said about how representation has had a huge impact on carving out a place for women in video games. But more than just these psychological barriers for women, the material hurdles are also very real. There’s an overlap here between gendered wage gaps and financial independence, plus the burden of unpaid care & household labour, and how this all translates to less opportunities for education or the pursuit of time-intensive hobbies. I’m quite proud of BMG for acknowledging this by offering things like a four-day work week and menstrual leave, benefits which we’d (probably) be less likely to have without a woman (and mother) as Managing Director.

The advent of open source and free software has also helped immensely with inclusivity & diversity within game development, for anyone experiencing material disadvantages. There is still an utterly massive gap in the industry between OECD countries and the rest of the world, but as technology becomes more accessible, this is slowly improving. And of course, across most lower socioeconomic strata, it’s women who tend to be hit the hardest.

Finally, I’d like to list just a few women who are actively working to make the industry more accessible, through freely available resources and the communities that have been built around them. If you’re a woman looking to enter a career in games, I can’t recommend them enough.

• Victoria Tran - a guiding light for many of us in community management
  
• Freya Holmer - an excellent communicator of more “technical” concepts in game development
  
• Yasmin Curren - for when you need encouragement, and lots of resources on a broad range of topics
  

We’ve come a long way since the 90s (and the years Before My Time)! It’s almost dizzying to see how much things have changed.

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Thank you for reading! If you’d like to support us, we encourage you to wishlist & spread the word about Beyond These Stars - or check out our previously released game, Before We Leave (currently 75% off for IWD!). You’re welcome to also come hang out with us on our Discord! And of course, don’t forget to peruse the rest of the games spotlighted as part of this year’s Women’s Day Sale.

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

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1073910/Before_We_Leave/

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

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

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?!)

[h2]The Building Showcase[/h2]

I’ve been working on a treat for you all - a Building Showcase! This includes tidbits of information about how the buildings work (wow!), plus in-game footage (gasp!). Let me introduce you to some early game buildings.

[h3]The Home Spaceship[/h3]

Some of you have seen this new friend before, but let me formally introduce you! The Home Spaceship is how you left your home, and how you arrived on the back of this massive, strange Space Whale. It will be your early-game lifeline in Beyond These Stars - it slowly produces everything the Peeps need to start a village.

Also, isn't the music beautiful? Benedict Nichols, the composer for Before We Leave, has returned for Beyond These Stars! More on that later down the track, though.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Huts, Gardens, and the Waterpump[/h3]

For our second video, you’ll see some familiar tech and buildings with a new twist!

Like in Before We Leave, the Peeps need help surviving after emerging from their Shelter (in BTS, this is the Home Spaceship). Build humble little Huts, sow Gardens teeming with… uh… potatoes? And, access the water flowing on the Space Whale’s back with the Water Pump.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

I’ll have more building showcase videos for you in the coming weeks - if you want these sneak peeks sooner, join our Discord!

[h2]Embracing Chaos: Our Managing Director Tests the Game[/h2]

Part of why indie development is so great is that you can discover things that need doing, understanding when they need doing, then leaping into action fast. Would it surprise you to know that can sometimes happen within the space of a quick, 15 minute meeting?

Well that’s exactly what happened a few weeks ago! Anna undertook a day of playtesting under our Quality Assurance Analysts guidance, and she kindly kept a log of what her day ended up looking like.

9.54. Standup is over. There's a dev blog due soon, but the dev team has been testing and polishing for the last four weeks, so I haven't written one—incremental improvements to the game aren’t the most exciting things to show off.

"I could do a diary of a day of playtesting" I say.

"A manager tests the game" says our game designer MJ. Everyone laughs. What could go wrong?

This will be my second day of playtesting, ever.

Read the full blog over on our website!

[h2]We’ll be at GamesCom! Sort of?![/h2]

Beyond These Stars will be at GamesCom (Wed, 23 Aug 2023 – Mon, 28 Aug 2023) in Cologne, Germany! Unfortunately since we’re on the opposite side of the world we can’t make it this time, but our lovely publisher Hooded Horse will be there to help you see our game and to answer your questions! Make sure you check out the other games Hooded Horse are publishing, too - their roster is pretty impressive, in my opinion.

Thanks for reading and talk to you all again soon
Emily,
Community Manager/Narrative Designer

(PS - if you want these posts direct to your email, you can sign up for our newsletters here!)

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 get into it, a gentle reminder that all these pictures are works in progress! There’s a very high chance the game will look different when it gets to you.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
This is a pretty long post, so let me give you the TL;DR right here. Scroll down if you want the juicy details!

• We’ve been tinkering with in-game UI in an effort to make it easy to understand but looking slick
  
• Sam and Isaac have been designing and implementing Mining Resource overlays, similar to the overlays in Before We Leave
  
• Isaac has also been working on making tiles look more lifelike; think raised garden beds, and “scuffed” looking edges to cliff tiles. He’s also been working on Spaceship animations (check the video above!)
  
• The composting mechanic has been implemented (scroll down for that video)
  
• Mereana has been working on save and load menus; it’s fiddly and important work!
  
• I’ve been writing and implementing the very first version of the tutorial. I’m happy with it but it could be better.
  

Okay, time for specifics:

[h3]RESOURCE PRODUCTION [/h3]
We’ve been experimenting with resource production diagrams! We’re hoping it will give you a clearer understanding of how certain resources come to be, and which ones are needed in certain buildings. Ultimately, this should help you make decisions easier and faster.


[h3]OVERHAULING OVERLAYS[/h3]
Some of you will remember the overlays in Before We Leave: they were super handy, right? Well, we’re rehashing them for Beyond These Stars! Sam and Isaac together have been working on an overlay which shows what Mining resources are available on Kewa’s back.


[h3]BEVELLED TO PERFECTION (sort of)[/h3]
Isaac has also been working on the edges of the hexagonal tiles - they're now beveled and roughed up, which makes the world on Kewa's back look so much more real. It also has the advantage of hiding some pesky texture seams! Of course, this is just a first pass, and Tom or Rafał will make better textures so Isaac’s initial efforts work well for different tile types. Isaac also reassured us that there’s tons of environmental assets still to come. No pictures of this yet, sorry!

What I can show you is puffy fields. Sounds weird, but that’s pretty much what they are. Dirt and fields aren’t perfectly flat, so Isaac has done a great job putting this beautiful, perfectly natural imperfection into the game.


[h3]YEAH? NAH…[/h3]
For Aussies and Kiwis, “yeah nah” and “nah yeah” are essential pieces of slang in our vocabularies. So naturally, Mereana simply had to include them while working on the Save/Load menu. Given that everything is very much still a work in progress, we’ll probably take them out… unless…? Tell me what you think and we might keep them in 👀



Mereana has also been working on the Load menu. This UI element involves a lot less slang, but that’s okay.

[h3]TUTORIAL WRITING [/h3]
In case you missed the memo, I’m working as Narrative Designer for this project as well as being the Community Manager! The community has been quiet lately, and part of the reason why is because I’ve been working on our tutorial. I’m very pleased to say, after a whole lot of grinding, the very first version of the tutorial is in the game. I am so glad to finally have it done - citybuilding games are quite complex, and so writing a tutorial that is easy to understand, not too wordy, and engaging is not an easy task. That said, this is the first version and I have a long way to go before I am truly content with it.



[h3]COMPOSTING[/h3]
In Beyond These Stars, the Peeps compost waste from their homes and use it to revitalise the environment around them! This is what that mechanic currently looks like in game:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h3]STUDIO NEWS[/h3]
We've had a lot of stuff happening at the studio too, but for the sake of brevity, please check out those blogs over on our website! (here & here.)

Whew, that was a long one folks! I hope you enjoyed reading.

Until next time!

Emily :)
Community Manager/Narrative Designer