...what can you expect from our initial Early Access launch? And how are we going to achieve this?
Hey peeps!
It’s been a couple of months now since we first released the Beyond These Stars demo into the wild. We’ve already talked a little bit about our feelings around Next Fest - see: this blog post, and our all-hands roundtable stream - but now that we’ve had some time to digest this into meaningful action, we thought we’d update you on what the road ahead looks like.
But first! Let’s address some of your feedback for the demo in a bit more detail.
As mentioned in the above linked blog post: player response so far seems to indicate that people not only like Beyond These Stars, but also get what we are aiming to achieve with the project, on both an artistic and technical level. This was hugely encouraging for a small team of people constantly chugging away at a big project while a tiny voice in the back of their heads cries out, wait, but will people actually like what I’m making? And will they understand the point of it all?
Having that affirmative answer to questions of self-doubt gave us a big morale boost – but it also emboldened us to truly trust some of the feedback coming from our player base. We’re lucky to have a perceptive and engaged community, and we value every suggestion, every request, and every bit of feedback: positive & negative alike! You are but one part of a relatively small machine working on a big, complicated game, and we appreciate that very much.
Some commonly requested features included things we’d already planned, but were somewhat undecided about. Some had been implemented to varying degrees in internal development builds, and some were truly impressive ideas we’d not thought of before. We can’t talk about everything here, of course - but here’s a sample of what you can expect with our Early Access launch.
Composting
Composting received some attention for its perceived imbalance. Players pointed to the sheer scale of plank production needed to generate enough wood waste to satisfy composting needs, particularly over larger areas (and ambitious landscaping only exacerbated this problem).
This is one of a few pain points we saw that were partly a result of the limited scope of the demo: you’re not quite *meant* to be able to perfectly and thoroughly transform Kewa so soon into the game, you see.
In the case of Composting, Early Access will see an alternative by-product resource: Food Waste. This will be produced by a particular type of building, which we will explore in further detail at a later date.
Wood Waste itself will also be in less demand once you unlock alternative sources for power generation. Currently you can set the Burner building to consume the Wood resource (something which admittedly was not super clear to many players), but Early Access will also add more options for power-producing buildings, which will be fuelled by other resources to come. Overall, our intent is that these Composting issues will be largely solved through progression.
Pollution
In the Beyond These Stars demo, we introduced the Pollution mechanic: how it is generated, the impact it has on your Peeps, etc. However, the demo stops just short of providing you the tools to actually address all that bad stuff slowly spreading through your settlement.
In Early Access, you’ll have two methods of addressing Pollution: one of them indirect, the other direct.
Players of Before We Leave will be pleased to know that Forests will passively absorb pollution, at a very gradual rate. Though this is what we’d consider the “indirect” method, the player does exert some influence over this, considering that you can plant trees by way of the Tree Nursery.
The more direct method of addressing Pollution will be through the Cleaner building, which we’ve mentioned briefly before. Peeps will mix Water and Chemicals (a new resource that will slot nicely into the resource-byproduct-resource chain) and scrub away, scrub away, scrub away…
UI, quality of life, and other gameplay features
For the demo, it was vital that we refined our core gameplay as much as possible, and development in the lead-up to NextFest compelled us to focus on polishing the game’s fundamentals. Your feedback means that we can continue improving on the systems at the heart of Beyond These Stars, making for a smoother gameplay experience overall. Everybody wins!
Peep happiness
Happiness is a deeply important game mechanic in Beyond These Stars. It influences birth rate (as Peeps will only procreate if their Happiness is above a certain threshold) and worker productivity (and thus Resource generation). Learning to manage Peep Happiness is thus a key ingredient for success, naturally - we heard your requests for more detailed information about it, and we agree!
Here is an idea of what we’ll be adding to help you track Happiness:
- Tooltips indicating the cause of decreases in Happiness. Similar to how it worked in Before We Leave, you’ll be able to hover over a Peep’s Happiness graph to see what was making them unhappy at that point in time.
- A Happiness effect overlay allowing you to see sources of Happiness at a glance.
- A section for average Happiness in the Location Summary.
Paused buildings
Some of you were pretty eager for clearer visual indicators of this. Technically we did give players the option to view infopins showing a building’s Paused status, but this was locked behind a setting in the Options menu. As a fix for this, we now show the player Paused infopins by default, and also give a more explicit option to see them:
Slower game speed options
A few of you asked for this, and we heard you! The fix we’ve implemented is not so much the addition of completely new game speed options, but rather the ability to lower the base game speed in the Options menu - which will then be further adjustable through the Game Speed keys in the top Info Bar.
For those who like to take things slow.
…and more!
This list is very far from exhaustive, so be aware that there will be much more by the time we launch in EA!
New content
That smooth gameplay experience is important, but we’d wager that a good portion of you are also looking forward to some good old ✨content✨.
Unfortunately, this is also the section where we’re going to have to be really, really vague. We don’t want to spoil things, you see, and I (your friendly local Community Manager) have taken great care to map out all the grand reveals in a well-paced, exciting manner.
Broadly, from what we’ve seen: players would like to be driven by more varied objectives (rather than “just surviving”); would like to see random events influencing Kewa; and would like more encounters of the intergalactic kind. We can confirm that you’re all definitely in for a treat. ;)
The road to Early Access
Overall - what can you expect from our initial Early Access launch? And how are we going to achieve this?
We’ve always had quite a clear vision of what we wanted the game to look like upon initial release into Early Access, so we’ve not deviated much from what you would have seen at the end of our demo:
But of course, any nice surprises will be kept firmly up our sleeves until the right moment. We’ve also spent a fair amount of time planning and laying the foundations for things we want to add throughout the months after we launch. This is also not to mention the spaces we have intentionally left pending community reception and input!
So stay tuned as we show off the above along our road to Early Access release. And as a bonus treat, here’s some concept art and screenshots from development:
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Note: these are all *very* much a work in progress and not necessarily representative of how they'll be in the actual game - but we wanted to give you some teasers to chew on. ;)
What do you think of our response to player feedback? And which of our upcoming features are you most excited for?
Let us know in the comments here, or hope on over to our Discord to chat with us!
Alternatively, join us for our stream tomorrow (Thursday 29/08 @ 3:30pm PT), and ask us your questions live!
📺 https://www.twitch.tv/balancingmonkeygames
And don't forget to catch us on our socials:
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See you all around!
Much love,
- Lia 💗
