So you’ve travelled to a new system, and found your first habitable planet - now what?

Any spacefaring society demands a robust interstellar infrastructure, and some solid logistics to keep the wheels of production turning.

Let’s take a look at how the player will be getting from Kewa to new lands, and how they’ll manage a growing network of trade between these places.


At the very start of the game, Kewa suddenly bolts and travels many light-years away from your home planet. The Peeps are thrust into their journey of galactic exploration a little earlier than they may have anticipated.

As a result, you’ll be unlocking the Space Ship Builder fairly early on, and with it the ability to create two early types of ship:


Right after your very first conversation with Kewa, you’ll unlock the Solar System View, which shows the position of various things floating about in space: Kewa, the local star, and various celestial objects (if any).

You won’t be able to properly identify these objects until you investigate them with a Scout Ship. We won’t go into detail here about what kinds of objects there are, but as an example: investigation by a Scout Ship will tell you whether a planet is able to be settled or not.


You’ll be needing these to ferry supplies to and from Kewa, and you’ll probably end up building a fair few of them throughout the game! We’ll talk more about shipping below.

And we of course allow you the satisfaction of pressing the big shiny launch button once your ship’s ready to go. How could we not??


In Before We Leave, ships would travel between planets; but in Beyond These Stars they shuttle between Space Ports, giving players greater control over their destinations. Space Ports can have up to four Landing Pads, with each pad able to accommodate one ship at a time. Space Ships cannot land on Kewa or on a Planet without - you guessed it! - a Landing Pad.

(Space Port with multiple Landing Pads, and a Spaceship Builder in the foreground)

How, then, is the player able to land and get started on a new planet?

The Settlement Ship is designed for exactly that. You don’t build it via the Spaceship Builder; instead, it is an upgraded form of the Home Spaceship. The “upgrade” here is that the Home Spaceship’s ability to produce a consistent supply of vital resources has been removed to make way for larger storage, and a Landing Pad attachment which permits it to act as a Space Port.

The Settlement Ship is also the only type of ship that can land without a Landing Pad, but once it has landed, it won’t be able to take off again until you’ve built at least one Space Port in the area. You don’t want to leave those Peeps stranded!

(Note the Landing Pad popping out on the left!)

It’s worth noting another divergence here from Before We Leave, for those who are familiar with that system. In BWL, you would land your ship with some resources and peeps, and that was that; you would have to then spend some time building up your town before it could be connected to the broader trade infrastructure between your various settlements.

In Beyond These Stars, because you have immediate access to a Landing Pad (and thus the ability to ferry ships to and from your new settlement), and because these planets are designed to be lacking in some of the basic resources needed to be fully self-sufficient, your immediate priorities have changed. Instead, once you land on your very first planet, we want to encourage you to familiarise yourself with our – drumroll, please –



Your initial shipping experience will be in pursuit of establishing yourself in foreign lands, building up basic infrastructure like wood cutters and water pumps, and bridges. Eventually, though, that flow is reversed: once your new settlement gets going, and you gain access to the unique resources offered by the new planet, you’ll want to start shipping those back to Kewa to unlock new buildings and materials.

We believe that managing an interstellar network of resources should be rewarding - but as you can see, there’s the potential for things to get all kinds of confusing and complex here. This is where a well designed shipping system comes into play!


There are two modes of shipping, each offering different benefits to the player.

Manual shipping gives you a high degree of control over exactly what, where, and when resources are being sent. It’s good for when you need a specific, finite amount of a resource (I need exactly 20 wood and 15 glass over there!), and for emergency situations (stop what you’re doing and give me 20 wood and 15 glass, stat!).

Automated shipping is more of a “set and forget”, and is better suited to maintaining an ongoing supply of a resource. It’s more-or-less equivalent to what was called ‘smart shipping’ in BWL, only much easier to use and understand.

(A glimpse at the automated shipping interface in System View.)

In Before We Leave, when we first introduced smart shipping it was after players had grown accustomed to making use of an intermediary port when shipping from planet A > island A to planet B > island B. This led to a lot of confusion when they assumed that this was also how smart shipping worked. (spoiler alert: it wasn’t.)

In Beyond These Stars, though, we hope to avoid this situation entirely in a few ways: by having automated shipping available from the very beginning; by making the UI a lot cleaner and easier to understand; and through this new method of shipping directly between Space Ports instead of between islands or planets.

Additionally, the new shipping algorithm is much more effective at figuring out what to do and where to direct resources based on what the player says they want.

The new Space Ports should also help address feedback that Before We Leave’s shipping felt “slow”. Congestion will be less of a problem considering the ability to build up to four Landing Pads per port; and having Trade Ships travel directly between Space Ports will be much quicker for trade.

(Also - switching between Local View & System View is quite seamless!)

A couple of things that we want to note early to avoid any confusion. Currently, shipping works only with Resources; although your initial settlements will always include ten Peeps to get you started, you cannot specifically transport Peeps between locations.

Also - and this is mostly for the Before We Leave players - we want to flag that at this stage sea ships won’t be included in our Early Access release. We're still mulling over if and how we want to include them. For a variety of reasons at the moment they don't have much use, and their absence shouldn’t pose practical issues considering the direct Space Port-to-Space Port shipping system.

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That’s all for this development diary! Transport and logistics are very important, but so often very overlooked; they can sometimes threaten to make-or-break player engagement once you get deep enough into games like ours. We want to make resource management stimulating and hands-on without it being tedious and repetitive, and nailing this is something we really hope to get right during Early Access!

As always, we welcome any and all feedback and questions; and if you’d like to chat to us more directly, do consider joining our Discord[discord.gg].

In our next Dev Diary we’ll be talking about Animals, Food Production & Clothing! Look forward to seeing it next month.

- Lia, Community Manager

We’ve just returned from a busy stint at PAX Australia - but today we’re dropping the elevator pitch to go deep into the yet-unrevealed details of a significant feature of Beyond These Stars: settleable planets!


Space can get lonely - particularly when you’re a hapless Peep emerging from decades of life in shelters, or floating through parts unknown.

This mutual feeling of loneliness, this longing to reconnect with others of their species, forms a spiritual parallel between the journey of the Peeps and that of their Space Whale companion, Kewa. The Peeps of Beyond These Stars continue a legacy of rediscovery that began in the game’s prequel, emerging from generations of (literally) sheltered life to rebuild civilisation among the deserted interplanetary colonies of their Ancestors. Kewa is similarly adrift among the cosmos, long separated from the rest of their kind. Over the course of the game, these intertwined journeys come to occupy the gulf of loneliness surrounding our main characters; they also compel the player through the vastness of space, towards exciting new discoveries.

Among the many celestial bodies and bits of interstellar junk encountered by the player, are Ancestral Planets that the Peeps can settle:

(Now where’d I park that Space Whale?)

Playable planets may not come as much of a surprise to players of Before We Leave, which did feature its fair share of planetary settlement & travel, but in Beyond These Stars you’ll always be coming back to Kewa. We’ll also note here that because these planets belonged to their Ancestors, the Peeps are effectively reclaiming land that used to be theirs; we took care to ensure no implication that they would be displacing any other beings in the process.


In Beyond These Stars, Kewa is always your main ride. From a gameplay perspective, we don’t intend for players to divert too much of their attention from our space whale friend; rather, settleable planets largely function as outposts that reinforce the core gameplay on Kewa’s back.

The range of resource types available on Kewa is intentionally limited. You’ll always have access to the materials needed for basic buildings that sustain life & a certain degree of population growth, but more advanced buildings will require you to wade further through the depths of space - to explore beyond just these stars, if you will. (heh)

Interstellar travel introduces you to planets with unique biomes and unusual resources. These new planets will expand gameplay by unlocking new resource types - which in turn are necessary to build new, more advanced buildings back on Kewa. There are further gameplay and narrative implications here, but we’ll be covering those in greater detail later.

(Mmmm...leaf.)


Each settleable planet is composed of one type of land biome, and one type of ocean biome.

Biomes dictate not just resource availability, but infrastructure opportunities as well. Land can be built upon and traversed, but ocean cannot - nor can it be terraformed (mostly). There are also implications for temperature and climate (more on that further down the track).

Let's take a look at the first settleable planet you'll encounter!

(Is this a familiar view to anyone?)

After some exploration, the Peeps eventually land upon a fertile, welcoming expanse of lush vegetation and rolling waves. We start you off easy: this planet doesn't quite present the gameplay challenges of later-game environments, though there are some limitations compared to what you're used to on Kewa. Forests for example are less dense here, and produce less wood per tile.

The combination of basic ocean & fertile land biomes here allow all kinds of interesting resources to flourish. One such resource is the Shell, which your Peeps can harvest by way of the Trawler:

(Spot the Peep at the wheel!)

As the unique flora of this planet implies, you’ll discover a greater variety of edible plants and their seeds, which you can bring back to your farms on Kewa. You may also notice a lack of stone & ore deposits. This is intentional: while we want to give you the necessary tools to sustain a basic outpost on each planet, we don’t want you getting too settled in. The game ultimately revolves around Kewa, where you will also have much more buildable space to play around with and nurture. Planet-side resource & space limitations help encourage you to engage with the shipping system we’ll be implementing – more on that in the coming weeks!

We’re also very excited to confirm that you will indeed be meeting some little guys!!

(Name a more iconic duo.)

As to what their role is in the resource chain, before you ask: no, Peeps are strictly vegetarian!! But we’ll chat more in our later diaries about the actual function and utility of animals.

Naturally, not all planets will be quite so breezy and idyllic. Some may present far more of a challenge than others. Some might not even contain any water sources at all, which presents obvious environmental consequences - namely in a lack of soil fertility. How will you navigate such harsh conditions? And just how weird are we going to get with it?? (we’re curious to know your thoughts on how strange our future, later-game planets may be!)

(Flora detail)

(New water effects & (cosmetic) aquatic plants)


We also have a brand new trailer, which features some completely new footage of what we’ve discussed above! Behold:

We’re very much excited for you to explore new and unusual planets in Beyond These Stars, along with many other features that we’ve not yet revealed.

Those with keen eyes will have noticed at the end of the trailer an adjustment to our estimated release year. It’s very important for us that we take the time to implement everything properly for our Early Access launch, and that we do so in a way that doesn’t burn out our team. Because of this, our initially projected 2024 release date has had to shift.

We truly love that so many people have been eagerly awaiting Beyond These Stars releasing into Early Access, and we’re working hard to make sure you get the best possible version of the game that we can give. Look to the skies in 2025!

With love,
Lia (Community Manager) 💓



https://test-steamproxy.haloskins.io/steamstore/app/2295060/Beyond_These_Stars/