Kia ora everyone! I have some big announcements to make today folks! Let me dive right in.
INTRODUCING OUR SECOND GAME
You might know it as Project Charlie, now you can know its real name - Beyond These Stars! It's a sci fi/fantasy city-building game where you build their civilization on the back of Kewa, a majestic Space Whale that travels the stars. Work in harmony with Kewa, or try to enforce your will - each decision will have consequences that only you are responsible for. Travel across the cosmos where you’ll find new planets to build outposts on and encounter other mysterious beings out in the depths of space. If this sounds quite different to Before We Leave, it is - but there are plenty of things in Beyond These Stars that will feel familiar to you if you've played Before We Leave.
It will be launching in Early Access - we don't have a date yet but we'll let you know as soon as we do.
Please go wishlist it on it's brand spankin' new Steam page!
OUR NEW PARTNERSHIP
We also have a new publisher - we’ve partnered with the fine folks at Hooded Horse, a publisher of strategy, simulation, and role-playing games based in Dallas, Texas. All of us at Balancing Monkey are thrilled to be working with them - go check out their Steam catalogue and you'll see why, it's pretty dang impressive. Thanks for helping us make our visions a reality, team!
FAQ
Alright, here's a thorough FAQ for you all!
❓What is Beyond These Stars?
✅ That’s our second game! It’s the sequel to Before We Leave. We were calling it Project Charlie for a while.
❓How long have you been developing the new game for?
✅ We began planning a sequel to Before We Leave in October 2020, with production starting in earnest in January 2022. As of September 2022, all of us are now working on the new game pretty much full time!
❓How many people are working on the new game?
✅ There are 8 employees at Balancing Monkey who are working on it, plus 5 contractors so far.
❓You have a new publisher now, too?!
✅ We sure do! Hooded Horse are awesome.
❓Why Early Access?
✅This is a big question. With Before We Leave (our first game), it became much better thanks to player feedback - we rolled out free content updates to fix problems and add ideas people suggested. This time around we’d like to do that again but through development! Early access lends itself to this sort of thing really well.
❓What stage is the game in?
✅ We’re in Alpha!
❓No EGS Exclusivity this time around?
✅ It’s highly unlikely at this stage. We will be selling the game on Epic but we decided to release it on Steam as well.
❓When will it be released?
✅ When it's ready! Sorry we can't be more precise.
❓Any sort of multiplayer this time?
✅ Not sure. Stay tuned for more info.
❓I'd love to help test Beyond These Stars - how can I do that?
✅ Awesome! We're not at that stage yet, but we'll be making the necessary announcements when we are. Please join our Discord to be notified when it's ready.
❓Isn’t this just *insert game name here*?
✅I wrote a dev blog post about this - please give it a read for some thorough answers!
❓Wait, what about Before We Leave?
✅ Work on Before We Leave is now complete. It feels surreal to move on from such an important game for us, but all good things must come to an end. Thank you very, VERY much for your support ❤
❓What's the best way to support Balancing Monkey Games while you work on your new project?
✅ Wishlist Beyond These Stars on Steam! Also interacting with our social media posts helps too. You can find everything in our link tree - https://lnk.bio/balancingmonkey
WRAPPING UP
And lastly, since our new game has a Steam page now, I’ll mainly be posting there from here on!
Thanks for reading! <3
Emily, Community Manager