Cozy, relaxing atmosphere
Mentioned in ~1 in 4 positive reviews
“It feels like a relaxed building game even with the survival elements. The music and sounds are wonderful.”
Steam review · 23.2 h played ↗
Beyond These Stars
Worth buying? What 106 Steam reviews say.Worth buying? Here’s what 106 Steam reviews actually say.
Mixed · 67%Mixed · 67%Balancing Monkey Games2026City Builder · Strategy · Simulation
−20%$29.99$23.99
US Steam price, checked 4 h ago
The verdict
A cozy, slow-paced space-whale colony builder with terraforming and adjacency puzzles. Skip it if you dislike byproduct-clogged production chains, weak writing or a clunky UI.
Great for
Fans of Before We Leave and cozy, slow city builders who like terraforming and adjacency puzzles
Main risk
Byproduct and pollution deadlocks that stall your economy, with little explanation of why
What players love
Charming art, music and space whale concept
Mentioned in ~1 in 4 positive reviews
“The aesthetics, the intuitive construction (especially building road networks!), a crisp and captivating audioscape, the animation and the SCALE of everything are all a delight~!”
Steam review · 1.5 h played ↗
Stable with fast dev hotfixes
Mentioned in ~1 in 7 positive reviews
“it is heartening to see three hotfixes drop within the first 48 hours of release, over a weekend, no less, which you rarely see.”
Steam review · 21 h played ↗
Good sequel with QoL improvements
Mentioned in ~1 in 8 positive reviews
“A huge leap in quality of life compared to the first game in my opinion.”
Steam review · 0.5 h played ↗
Terraforming and landscape shaping
Mentioned in ~1 in 8 positive reviews
“You can terraform so much, reshaping where water flows and turn dust into forests”
Steam review · 5.2 h played ↗
Adjacency bonuses and production puzzles
Mentioned in ~1 in 10 positive reviews
“Adjacency bonuses and penalties add a great puzzle to city planning”
Steam review · 9.6 h played ↗
What players complain about
Poor, cringey or preachy story and dialogue
Mentioned in ~1 in 2 negative reviews
“The characters are just bad and add nothing to the experience”
Steam review · 7.7 h played ↗
Byproducts and pollution cause deadlocks
Mentioned in ~2 in 5 negative reviews
“The problem is that this makes the supply chain into a weird double chain where any one step freezing up on one side of the chain freezes the whole chain.”
Steam review · 14.4 h played ↗
Too easy, shallow tech tree and progression
Mentioned in ~1 in 4 negative reviews
“Advancements are too quick. Solutions are too simple. I power buildings too easily.”
Steam review · 1.3 h played ↗
Workers idle and unclear why buildings stop
Mentioned in ~1 in 5 negative reviews
“I had well over a dozen peeps just idling in their houses according to the workforce info bar, while multiple buildings were non-functional due to lack of workers (no idea why).”
Steam review · 1 h played ↗
Clunky, obtuse UI
Mentioned in ~1 in 5 negative reviews
“The UI is a bit too obtuse and construction feels really janky, with buildings constantly reorienting themselves as you try to place them.”
Steam review · 1 h played ↗
Scarce resources and late-game trade issues
Mentioned in ~1 in 5 negative reviews
“stone cannot be made by any means except mining it, so you are out of luck if there is nowhere to mine it.”
Steam review · 7.7 h played ↗
System requirements
From the Steam store page
Steam Deck: Playable7 GB
Minimum
OSWindows® 10 (64-bit)
ProcessorIntel® Core™ i5-6600 (quad-core) / AMD® Ryzen™ 3 3200G (quad-core)
Memory8 GB RAM
GraphicsNVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 960 (4 GB) / AMD® Radeon™ RX 570 (4 GB)
Storage7 GB available space
Recommended
OSWindows® 10 (64-bit)
ProcessorIntel® Core™ i5-9600 (hexa-core) / AMD® Ryzen™ 5 2600X (hexa-core)
Memory16 GB RAM
GraphicsNVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2070 (8 GB) / AMD® Radeon™ RX 6600 XT (8 GB)
Storage7 GB available space
OSWindows® 10 (64-bit)
ProcessorIntel® Core™ i5-6600 (quad-core) / AMD® Ryzen™ 3 3200G (quad-core)
Memory8 GB RAM
GraphicsNVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 960 (4 GB) / AMD® Radeon™ RX 570 (4 GB)
Storage7 GB available space
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