Beyond These Stars Playthrough Guide: Building a Civilization on a Space Whale

Can you actually build a thriving civilization on the back of a giant space whale? A Beyond These Stars playthrough answers that question with a confident yes — and then immediately complicates it with pollution, byproducts, and genuinely tricky adjacency puzzles. Developed by Balancing Monkey Games, the small New Zealand studio behind Before We Leave, and published by Hooded Horse, this hex-based city builder launched on October 16, 2026. Whether you're weighing a purchase or you've already landed on Kewa, this guide breaks down what a typical Beyond These Stars playthrough looks like from your first hut to the mid-game, based on hands-on player experience with a near-final preview build.

What Is Beyond These Stars?

Beyond These Stars is a city builder and the direct sequel to 2021's Before We Leave. Developed under the codename Project Charlie and revealed in February 2023, it moves the series from tiny spherical planets to the back of Kewa, a colossal space whale. Your Peeps — the charming, armless little citizens the studio is known for — arrive aboard a home spaceship and must carve a functioning colony out of the whale's hex-tiled spine. You can follow the game's ongoing development on the official Balancing Monkey Games website.

Returning pillars like pollution and happiness management are back, but the sequel layers on new systems: underground resource deposits, a full waste-management loop, nuanced elevation with flowing water, terraforming, and a breathable-oxygen boundary that restricts where you can build. Community reports also indicate a character named Ublo the alien is planned as DLC. If the premise sounds like Discworld with more industry, you're not alone — that's exactly the comparison early players keep making.

Game Modes: Story, Sandbox, and Scenarios

Your Beyond These Stars playthrough starts with a choice between three modes, and the differences matter more than they first appear.

Story mode is the recommended entry point because it doubles as the tutorial and delivers narrative events you simply don't get in sandbox — colony logs, character moments, and story beats explaining why your Peeps hid in deep bunkers for centuries before returning to the stars. Sandbox mode, by contrast, hands you the keys to the simulation:

That last pairing deserves a highlight: based on player experience with the preview build, combining "unlock all buildings" with "instant construction" lets you spam even expensive structures like the jeweler without spending a single resource. If you'd rather keep the survival loop intact, simply enable one option without the other.

Early-Game Walkthrough: Your First Steps on Kewa

A Beyond These Stars playthrough opens on the home spaceship, where 30 Peeps begin their new life. The tutorial walks you through a clear progression that doubles as a masterclass in the game's planning systems. Roads are completely free — drag them out or click start and end points — and ramps generate automatically across the whale's curved terrain. Every building must touch a road, with a few decorative exceptions.

A few details worth knowing before you place anything. The home spaceship slowly produces water, potatoes, wood, stone, iron, and tools on its own, so the earliest economy is more forgiving than it looks. The blue-purple outline on the map marks the edge of the breathable-oxygen zone — nothing can be built beyond it until you develop your environment further. Unlocking the hedge garden and wildflowers by generating 20 power is an easy happiness win near housing, and decorations don't need road access.

One quirk early players have noticed: there's no visible construction-progress bar, so it's hard to tell how long a building has left. Prioritizing a building from its info card helps nudge idle Peeps toward the site.

Adjacency Effects: The Puzzle That Defines Any Beyond These Stars Playthrough

Every building displays a list of adjacency effects on its placement panel, and mastering these trade-offs separates a sluggish colony from an efficient one. Bonuses and penalties frequently arrive bundled together, so there's rarely a perfect spot — only smart compromises.

Three planning principles follow from this system. First, always check the left-hand panel before confirming a placement — mousing over a tile previews exactly which effects will activate. Second, don't chase every bonus; a potato patch pair's speed penalty often matters less than its extra yield. Third, zone deliberately: keep smelters, toolsmiths, and generators on the whale's barren fringes, and cluster housing around farms and gardens where happiness modifiers stack in your favor.

Tech Tree, Perks, and Mid-Game Progression

The tech tree spans eleven categories, and unlocking nodes requires producing prerequisites rather than spending research points — craft five iron ore to unlock the burner generator and ore smelter, then ten to reach the toolsmith. Every building you unlock also grants a perk point for a sprawling web of Peep, adjacency, and building perks (154 by one early count), with the most powerful options at the outer edges.

The mid-game is where a Beyond These Stars playthrough gets genuinely interesting. Byproduct chains become the star: the fuel plant converts water and slag into fuel (producing goo), the fuel generator burns that fuel for power, and the chemical factory turns goo and water into chemicals. Waste from one process becomes feedstock for the next. Further down the tree, the spaceship builder and space port strongly suggest you won't be stuck on one whale forever, while radiation-protecting structures reportedly permit access to the galaxy's mysterious central sector.

Pollution and Waste Management Tips

Pollution is the series' signature tension, and this sequel makes waste a first-class mechanic. Soot, slag, and wood waste accumulate quickly, and player reports from the preview build describe tiles becoming highly polluted and spawning toxic areas if neglected. Keep these habits in mind:

• Burn your wood waste. The burner generator accepts it as fuel, solving two problems at once.
• Place a cleaner near industry. Its purple radius shows effective range; assign it to soot or slag specifically.
• Compost what you can't burn. The compost heap recycles wood and organic waste into compost that makes bare tiles fertile.
• Plant trees. Tree nurseries actively reduce pollution while supporting the oxygen boundary you'll want to expand.
• Use the overlays. Pollution-rate and terrain-resource overlays are free information — check them before every expansion.
• Push industry outward. Production slows significantly on heavily polluted tiles, so distancing factories from housing pays off twice.

The good news: sandbox mode lets you lower pollution rates or disable toxic tiles entirely if you'd rather focus on building a beautiful whale-top metropolis.

FAQ

What is Beyond These Stars? It's a hex-based city builder by Balancing Monkey Games, published by Hooded Horse, released October 16, 2026. You build a civilization on Kewa, a giant space whale, managing Peeps, pollution, happiness, and an expansive tech tree. It's the sequel to 2021's Before We Leave.

What does the early game of a Beyond These Stars playthrough involve? The first hour covers housing your 30 starting Peeps, producing food and wood, mining stone and iron, generating power, and crafting tools. Roads are free, adjacency effects shape every placement, and a breathable-oxygen boundary limits expansion until you advance your terraforming tech.

Can you skip the tech tree entirely? Yes. Sandbox mode includes an "unlock all buildings" option, and pairing it with "instant construction" lets you place any building immediately without consuming resources, based on player experience with the preview build.

How punishing is pollution? Manageable with planning. Cleaners remove soot and slag, compost heaps recycle waste, and tree nurseries cut pollution down. Community reports warn that neglected tiles spawn toxic areas, so stay on top of your industrial zones — or soften the settings in sandbox for a relaxed session.