Beyond These Stars is a city builder on the space whale Kewa
Beyond These Stars is a single-player simulation and strategy game for Windows. Balancing Monkey Games developed it, Hooded Horse published it, and Steam lists the release date as 16 October 2026. Peeps, the people of the game, settle on Kewa, a sentient space whale, and have to keep supply lines working while that living world travels the galaxy.
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Release facts
- Steam app
- 2295060 · store page
- Release
- 16 October 2026 on Steam. The developer press kit states 17 October 2026 in New Zealand time, which it equates to 16 October 2026 Central Time.
- Developer
- Balancing Monkey Games, Dunedin (Ōtepoti), Aotearoa New Zealand
- Publisher
- Hooded Horse
- Genres
- Simulation and strategy on Steam. The publisher page also tags it as a city builder and a colony-management game.
- Players
- Single-player. Steam does not list a multiplayer category.
- Platform
- Windows. Steam’s platform flags for Mac and Linux are off, and GOG says the game is officially supported on Windows.
The store’s short description is the cleanest one-line pitch: build a city on the back of a space whale, manage supply chains and the needs of your people, build outposts, meet aliens, and uncover mysteries. The longer store text adds that the Peeps are recovering from uncertain times and that Kewa is lonely.
What the game asks you to do
The Steam and GOG descriptions split the work into two clusters. On Kewa, the land starts mostly barren aside from a small green patch by the water. Placement has to respect production routes. Terraforming, in the store’s words, means digging canals, adding topsoil for farming, and planting trees so forests can spread the atmosphere and open more city space. New technology raises demand, and the store warns that the habitat shrinks if the ecosystem is pushed too far.
Off the whale, the same pages describe outposts on other planets as a way to find resources the whale’s back cannot spare. How long an outpost lasts depends on the relationship with Kewa, because Kewa can decide it is time to leave a system. Kewa is written as a companion with hopes of their own, not a mount. Alien species are described as sources of objectives, rewards, trade, and technologies. The Kewa guide, the supply-chain guide, and the galaxy guide separate those three layers using the official wiki.
Who it is for
Two reviews published on 13 October 2026, before the public release date, both describe a dense logistics game. LadiesGamers calls the learning curve steeper than a typical strategy simulation and says the game is a poor fit for beginners. GameObserver calls it a resource simulation for players who want that density, and scores it 8 out of 10 while also reporting conversation freezes in the version they played. Both outlets say they received a review code.
The studio describes its games as non-violent and aimed at a relaxed, accessible audience. Steam lists adjustable difficulty, but the sources used here do not say what those difficulty options change. Players of the studio’s earlier game, Before We Leave, are the closest existing audience: the press kit calls Beyond These Stars that game’s sequel, and GameObserver contrasts the older “appease or avoid the whales” setup with living on Kewa.
Modes
Steam’s store categories do not name campaign, sandbox, or scenario modes. Both the LadiesGamers and GameObserver reviews do. They describe a story campaign, a sandbox that keeps the systems without the story beats, and a scenario mode. GameObserver describes scenarios as timed or trade-based challenges. This site does not have a list of scenario titles or win conditions.
Price and stores
A Hooded Horse press release on Games Press, dated 16 October 2026, lists the PC price as $29.99, £24.99, €29.99, and ¥2,980, and says a 20 percent launch discount would run for two weeks. It names Steam, GOG, the Epic Games Store, the Microsoft Store, and PC Game Pass. The same release says the game had 250,000 wishlists before launch. That wishlist figure is the publisher’s claim.
On 17 October 2026, Steam’s app details for the US dollar price showed a $29.99 list price and a 20 percent discount to $23.99. The GOG page fetched the same day showed 29.99 and 23.99 without a currency symbol in the extracted text. Prices move. This page does not treat the discount as permanent.
On 17 October 2026, Steam’s review API returned a Positive summary from 21 reviews: 18 positive and 3 negative. That count will change.
Languages and store features
Steam lists 15 languages: English, French, German, Spanish (Spain), Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Italian, Czech, Turkish, and Ukrainian. In that list, the full-audio asterisk appears on English and Ukrainian. GOG labels all 15 as having both audio and text. This guide does not resolve that difference.
Steam also lists 64 achievements, trading cards, Steam Cloud, and Family Sharing. Public highlighted achievement names in the app record include Healing Waters, A Long Way From Home, What’s That?, Becoming Something More, Better Be Home Soon, No Place Like Home, Shine On, and Waste Not, Want Not. Unlock rules are not documented here, and hidden achievement names are left off this page. The app record includes a demo with app id 2546270. Whether that demo is still offered in the store client is not confirmed here.
Accessibility tags with plain English labels on Steam are adjustable text size, camera comfort, custom volume controls, stereo sound, adjustable difficulty, a mouse-only option, playable without timed input, and save anytime. Two further category names arrived as internal tokens for contrast controls and playable at your own pace.
Controller support is unknown. It is not among Steam’s listed categories. A LadiesGamers review written before release marked controller support as unconfirmed.
Who made it
The press kit says development started in 2022, with a demo on 11 June 2024 and a demo update on 18 November 2025. It credits support from the New Zealand government’s Centre of Digital Excellence (CODE) and a publishing partnership with Hooded Horse. At the New Zealand Game Awards 2026, The Pavs, the press kit lists two awards: The Perfect Recipe, for excellence in design, and The Accessible Ambrosia, for excellence in accessibility.
Sam Barham is credited as creative director. The same kit names Mereana Johnston (game design, UI, UX, and programming), Isaac Bennett (senior programmer and technical artist), Laura Anderson and Emily Latta (narrative), and a wider art, audio, production, and community team. Benedict Nichols is the composer. Voice credits name Baz the Wanderer, José, Ublo, Matilda, Kieran, Jerry, N’Orva, and Lottie, plus Peep chatter and a separate voiceover credit for Tuki Laumea. The kit does not say which of those roles are aliens.
PC specs are on the system requirements page. Opening priorities drawn from the official wiki and the two reviews are on the beginner tips page.