Screenshots
Watch trailer on Steam ↗Beyond These Stars
Balancing Monkey Games · Published by Hooded Horse · Official site ↗
Last updated 27 Sept 2026
Build a city on the back of a Space Whale and learn to coexist as you journey through the stars. Manage intricate supply chains and the needs of your people as you build outposts, meet aliens, and uncover the mysteries of the universe.
Simulation, Strategy · 2026 · More free games
Embark on a journey through the stars as you build outposts and manage intricate supply chains for your people. Discover the mysteries of the universe while coexisting with aliens, all under the vast expanse of Beyond These Stars' unique setting.
About this game
Recovering from uncertain times, your Peeps find themselves on the back of Kewa - a lonely Space Whale journeying across the universe. Building a city on the back of a sentient creature comes with its own set of challenges, but as you build your relationship and travel across the galaxy, you'll come across great opportunities for exploration and stable expansion. Meet other species, pursue the needs and wants of your Peeps, and seek the truth about their ancestors and the Space Whales alike.
The vastness of space is full of mysteries, and as you first arrive at your new home atop the Space Whale Kewa, your Peeps will quickly learn the need to work together – with each other, but also with their new home.
A Home Among the Stars - Build a sprawling city on the back of a universe-traveling Space Whale as your Peeps seek places to live and work. Your new home is largely desolate and inhospitable when you arrive, save for a small patch of green by the water – work around the contours of the land as you plan your city, taking into account the efficiency of your production chains. Will you simply place buildings as the land allows, or will you change its very shape to take advantage of adjacency bonuses and reduced travel times?
Reach Far and Wide - Terraform the land around you to better suit your needs. Create a thriving ecosystem by digging canals and adding top soil in preparation for farming. Plant trees to maintain a steady flow of raw materials, and maintain entire forests to help spread the atmosphere and facilitate the expansion of your city.
A Fragile Equilibrium - Prepare to seek out additional resources as you research new technologies and gain access to advanced goods. Your people’s needs will grow, and complex logistics networks and mining infrastructure will follow. You must be careful not to tip the delicate balance of the ecosystem, however – the land on Kewa is fragile, and if not tended to with care, your habitat will shrink. Will you walk a fine line of sustainability by risking Kewa’s ecosystem, or will you seek opportunities to instead gather resources on other worlds to keep Kewa happy?
Unveil the shared history of the galaxy as you travel from system to system with Kewa – seek answers about your past, learn about the history of the Space Whales, and understand the unique relationships that bind everyone together.
Reliable Outposts - Kewa’s environment is plentiful, but not without limits – there will often be a dearth of essential resources and space, and you’ll want to ensure the environment is not over-exploited. Create outposts on nearby planets and seek out supplementary sources of what you need – but unless you build a strong relationship with Kewa, you may find it difficult to predict how long you have at an outpost before Kewa decides it's time to leave a system behind.
A Travel Companion - Kewa longs for connection, and is no mere pet – your home has hopes and dreams for the journey through space. Through understanding Kewa’s needs and desires you can better build a symbiotic relationship. This will give you the opportunity to work in collaboration and allow you to decide on a path together as you journey across the universe.
Friends Along the Way - On your journey, you will cross paths with alien species offering unique opportunities – additional objectives and their subsequent rewards, opportunities for trade, and new technologies with the doors they open.
Balance your people’s survival, prosperity, and progress with the need to co-exist with Kewa in a journey across space. Beyond These Stars asks you to consider the logistics of your supply chains and production lines within the context of a living, breathing, sentient world.
System Requirements
Will my PC run this? →Minimum
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows® 10 (64-bit)
- Processor: Intel® Core™ i3-6300 (dual-core) / AMD® FX-Series™ FX-9370 (quad-core)
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 750 (2 GB) / AMD® Radeon™ R9 380 (2 GB)
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 6 GB available space
Recommended
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows® 10 (64-bit)
- Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-6600 (quad-core) / AMD® Ryzen™ 3 3200G (quad-core)
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1050 Ti (4 GB) / AMD® Radeon™ RX 580 (8 GB)
- DirectX: Version 12
- Storage: 6 GB available space
Supported Languages
*languages with full audio support
Latest news
AnnouncementsOfficial
Beyond These Stars Releases October 15, 2026!
Hi all! We are so, so excited to announce that Beyond These Stars will be releasing on October 15th, 2026! If you haven’t already, now is the perfect time to play the Demo and get a feel for what's to come. Check out the release date trailer below…Recovering from uncertain times, your Peeps find themselves on the back of Kewa - a lonely Space Whale journeying across the universe. Building a city on the back of a sentient creature comes with its own set of challenges, but as you build your relationship and travel across the galaxy, you'll come across great opportunities for exploration and stable expansion. Meet other species, pursue the needs and wants of your Peeps, and seek the truth about their ancestors and the Space Whales alike. Join the Beyond These Stars CommunityIf you’d like to keep up to date with news, dev blogs, and chat with fellow Community members, check out the Beyond These Stars Community through the links below. Discord | Instagram | Bluesky | X | TikTok | YouTube | WebsiteRead full article on Community Announcements (Matt (Hooded Horse))AnnouncementsOfficial
Dev Blog #29 - Keeping Kewa Happy
One of the most important things you need to be taking care of during your travels in Beyond These Stars is not just your Peeps, but Kewa themself! Kewa is a sentient being, a giant Space Whale with needs and wants of their own. We learn this close to the start of the game when Kewa ‘zoots’ through space and takes the Peeps far from their home planet. A unique part of our game design is that Kewa’s happiness plays an important role in also keeping your Peeps happy! What happens if Kewa is unhappy? They will go and eat all the planets you have settled with your Peeps!! Okay no, I'm kidding, they won't do that. Unhappy Kewa does cause some issues for your Peeps that can make life a little bit more difficult. So just what is it that affects Kewa’s happiness?First off, your behaviour and the impact it has on Kewa’s health can directly affect their mood. Even we Humans know that feeling unhealthy can make you unhappy, just as feeling healthy can make you feel happy! Keeping their biome healthy by planting trees, minimising pollution and creating rivers around your settlements on Kewa’s plate will help them feel good. Temperature can also have a positive or negative impact on Kewa’s happiness and health. Sitting too long in a hot galaxy can make Kewa unhappy, and if their happiness drops too much, they’ll initiate emergency travel to somewhere cold to cool down for a bit. Kewa’s Health is incredibly important to their Happiness and can directly affect how your story progresses and concludes in Beyond These Stars. The dialogue choices you make in your conversations with Kewa can also have a direct impact on their happiness. Saying things that may hurt Kewa will lower their happiness score slightly, while saying positive things will boost the score a little, so how you choose to communicate has a real impact. Okay, fine! We’ve told you what affects their health. But how do you KNOW that they are happy or unhappy, and how can you make them feel better (or worse, but that’s ...Read full article on Community Announcements (blubre)AnnouncementsOfficial
Dev Blog #28 - Settleable Planets
Today we’re going to take a look at an exciting part of Beyond These Stars that goes far beyond the demo gameplay. In Beyond These Stars you can go, well, beyond the stars! You may be hesitant to leave the comfort of Kewa but beyond the stars (see what I’m doing here) there are habitable planets for you and your Peeps to settle! Once you unlock the ability to travel with Kewa, you’ll gain access to the Galaxy Map. Initially this will only be partially visible, but as you continue your journey you’ll unlock more and more to explore. Within the Galaxy Map you’ll see nodes containing stars that you can ask Kewa to travel to, and which you can further investigate on your Scout Ship with Jose. These nodes may hold barren planets that cannot support Peep life, space junk, strange objects, trade stations, and perhaps even aliens to befriend! But most importantly, some of those stars will house planets that will support Peep life and contain new resources that you are unable to find on Kewa. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Sneak peek of the Sandbox galaxy map to avoid spoilersNow, I won’t go too much into each and every resource you can get through settling the planets, as I don’t want to give away any big spoilers. Instead, I’m going to focus on my favourite planet, and the resources that you can get from it. When you explore the galaxy, you’ll find this planet somewhere in the ‘Neutral Sector,’ enjoying a moderate climate near a pleasantly warm sun. The reason for it being special to me? New animals! On this planet you’ll find chickens, but most importantly, my favourite… cows! With these animals, you’ll be able to farm milk and eggs using the new Pasture building, which will means you’re able to expand your Peeps diet from just potatoes! (I’m sure Lottie will be very happy about this.)This planet is rich with fertile land, clean ocean water, the cute new animals. s well as berries, wheat (to feed your animals) and shells to make cement! Of course, new resources require new buildings, ...Read full article on Community Announcements (blubre)AnnouncementsOfficial
Dev Blog #27 - Sandbox Mode
Sheep and Cows on Kewa? All mineable resources? NO RIVER? Absolutely bonkers.Nope, not bonkers. Introducing Sandbox Mode!With Sandbox Mode, you will have complete control over what is available to you on Kewa that would normally only be available on the habitable plants you discover throughout the Galaxy in Story Mode. Some of the selections you decide from when creating your Sandbox game could make the game easier or more difficult. It’s up to you!Certain elements of the game may resonate with some of you more than others, and letting you be able to customise your experience to whatever you’re in the mood for lets you have as much fun as you’d like! Although we do still recommend checking out Story Mode first as it’s structured in a way that lets you learn the systems at a sensible pace (and with optional tutorial helpers!).When it comes to freedom, these are a few things you can play around with when creating your Sandbox game:Resources. You can pick and choose which resources you’d like to be available on Kewa. This includes things like Sheep and Cows, or resource deposits!Water Distribution. Want to start with a river, or without?Terrain. Do you want your Kewa to be hilly, flat? Maybe some tall spires or mesas!Planets. How many? Choose which resources you want on them, what the biome is and the terrain. You’ll also have options such as unlocking all the buildings from the start!Each overall selection, and each individual planet will have an indicator of how the choices within it will affect the difficulty of the game. Along with an overall summary of the game difficulty. We’ve been having so much fun testing Sandbox Mode and we’re so excited to see what you all create with the mode on release!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/balancingmonkeygamesRead full article on Community Announcements (blubre)AnnouncementsOfficial
Dev Blog #26 - Our Peep Crew Had A Makeover!
We received a lot of amazing feedback from the Beyond These Stars Demo (and yes, we were listening 👀), especially when it came to our Peep Character portraits. So we went back to the drawing board, reworked, refined and reimagined them. Which means that now… it’s time to introduce the new and improved Peep Portraits! A lot of the feedback focused on how our original Peep Portraits didn’t quite fit the feel and art style of the game, so we tasked one of our artists, Reyna, with bringing our Peeps to a new level. And boy did she deliver! I asked Reyna what her thought process and inspiration were while designing our new characters: “I read through the lore document Laura had provided me and focused on how best to communicate their personalities through expression, the way they wore their clothing and how they would emote. I was given very detailed physical descriptions of the characters, so focused more on exploring art style than exploring the physical features of the characters themselves” “As for inspirations, I was inspired by the art of Hades, Pyre and Prince of Persia the Lost Crown but we wanted to find something that more closely matched the 3D style of Beyond These Stars so I did some very cartoon versions of the characters and some more realistic versions of the characters and we settled on something between the two. The old art was very helpful because I was able to ask ‘what would these characters look like if I mixed in a little more realism" and go from there.’ ”Of course, throughout Beyond These Stars you’ll be introduced to some other fun characters throughout your journey. While we won’t spoil anything just yet on who they may be, if you’ve spent some time in our Community Discord you may have heard of the infamous Ublo. This cheeky Alien has also received a makeover - here’s a peek! We absolutely adore our Peeps new look’, and we hope that you love them just as much as we do! And of course, a HUGE props to Reyna for bringing our beloved Peep crew to ...Read full article on Community Announcements (blubre)
