If you’ve ever wanted to live atop a giant space whale (and who hasn’t), Beyond These Stars is here to make that fantasy come true. The new Steam city-building game from indie strategy publisher Hooded Horse and developer Balancing Monkey Games promises an adventure across the galaxy as you ride the colossal cetacean through the stars in search of new planets teeming with resources , extraterrestrial life and adventure.
By taking on a species called Peeps, you’ll have to build not only your city on Kewa, the intelligent, giant space whale in question, but also your relationship with Kewa. As a living creature, you’ll need to make sure it’s as happy as the rest of your population. While you can choose to mine Kewa’s resources or try to force the creature to go where you want, a more mutually beneficial relationship might be the wisest approach.
The city building itself takes place on a top-down hexagonal grid that will be very familiar to fans of strategy and 4X games. You can reshape the terrain and place structures to build your settlement, though that alone won’t be enough to establish a thriving civilization. During your journey, you will also be able to establish outposts on other planets that you visit, and you will encounter other creatures throughout your travels that you can interact with in various ways.
While the focus is on city building (resource management, settlement layout design, etc.), you’ll also have to manage other factors, such as the relationship between Peeps and Kewa. You’ll need to consider durability, as well as potential issues like pollution. There are also seasonal vagaries to deal with: while Kewa soars through the stars, its proximity to the suns will cause fluctuations in the environment and weather conditions.
Everything so far looks pretty spectacular, with a clean art style that switches between the close-up view of your civilization’s sprawling structures and the wide shots of Kewa in space. This is complemented by beautiful artwork for some of the alien species you’ll encounter as you develop, which can be seen in the trailer above. We are certainly excited to get to work and make Kewa our happy home.
Beyond These Stars is slated for PC release via Steam Early Access and the Epic Games Store in 2023. In the meantime, you can list the game on Steam or Epic.
If you just can’t get enough of exploring, expanding, exploiting and exterminating, we’ve got more of the best 4X games on PC in 2023. Civ 6 DLC Rulers of the Sahara is the latest update. day of one of the genre’s best, and we’ve got plenty more, great space games if you fancy a wider look at some of the PC favorites among the stars.