Beyond These Stars: 7 Best Games Like It in 2026

If you've spent a dozen hours coaxing a fragile ecosystem to life on the back of a space whale, you already know the problem: Beyond These Stars is a very specific itch. You want production chains, terraforming, a sentient companion with opinions, and a slower, kinder pace than most strategy games offer. Once you finish your first playthrough, the search for games like Beyond These Stars begins almost immediately.

That search is harder than it looks. The game sits at a strange intersection — part colony sim, part city builder, part galaxy-wide logistics puzzle — and few titles hit all three notes at once. So this list breaks down seven games that scratch different parts of the same itch, with honest notes on where each one diverges from Balancing Monkey Games' space-whale sim.

Check out beginner guide for more details.

What Makes Beyond These Stars Tick

Before comparing alternatives, it helps to name the ingredients. Released on October 16, 2026, by Balancing Monkey Games and published by Hooded Horse, the game has settled at a "Mostly Positive" Steam rating based on early player reviews. Its store tags tell you almost everything: city builder, colony sim, base building, resource management, automation, and survival.

Here's what actually defines the experience, based on the official Steam listing and the developer's site:

• A living map. Your city sits on Kewa, a sentient space whale. The land is contoured, limited, and fragile — over-exploit it and your habitat literally shrinks.
• Terraforming as a core loop. You dig canals, add topsoil, and plant forests to spread atmosphere and unlock expansion.
• Supply chains with consequences. Advanced goods require mining infrastructure, and every extraction decision ripples through the ecosystem.
• A companion with a voice. Kewa reacts to your choices, which gives the game an emotional throughline most colony sims lack.
• A gentle pace. There's combat tension, but the fantasy is stewardship, not conquest.

Keep those five pillars in mind. The games below each deliver two or three of them well, and no single title replaces Beyond These Stars entirely.

1. Timberborn — Best for Terraforming and Water Management

If terraforming is the part you loved most, Timberborn is the closest match on the market. You play as beavers (and later, iron-teeth badgers) building a settlement around a river that floods and dries on a cycle. Dams, levees, and reservoirs aren't optional flavor — they're the entire game.

The map is finite and shaped by your engineering, just like Kewa. You'll spend hours sculpting terrain to route water to dry land, then watching forests bloom where there was once dust. It lacks a sentient planet and the space-whale framing, but the stewardship fantasy is intact.

• Platforms: PC (Steam, GOG)
• Price: Around $24.99
• Best for: Players who want terraforming as a puzzle, not a backdrop

2. RimWorld — Best for Colony Management Depth

RimWorld is the benchmark every colony sim gets measured against, and for good reason. Three survivors crash-land on a hostile world, and you manage their needs, moods, relationships, and grudges while building a base that can survive raids, disease, and bad luck.

It's harsher than Beyond These Stars — RimWorld will kill your colonists in ways that feel personal — but the supply-chain and base-building depth is unmatched. If you want the colony sim half of the itch without the cozy space-whale wrapper, this is the pick.

• Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
• Price: Around $34.99 plus DLC
• Best for: Players who want systemic depth and don't mind losing

3. Against the Storm — Best for Run-Based City Building

Against the Storm solves a problem many city builders have: the late game gets stale. Its answer is a roguelite structure. You build a settlement, complete objectives before a storm wipes the map, then carry meta-progression into the next run.

The moment-to-moment loop — placing buildings, managing supply chains, adapting to randomized biomes — will feel familiar to Beyond These Stars players. What's different is the pace. Runs are short and punchy rather than slow and contemplative.

• Platforms: PC
• Price: Around $29.99
• Best for: Players who want city building in digestible sessions

4. Oxygen Not Included — Best for Systems and Automation

Klei's colony sim is the most mechanically dense game on this list. You manage duplicants inside an asteroid, balancing oxygen, temperature, plumbing, and power in a web of interacting systems that will absolutely punish sloppy planning.

Beyond These Stars asks you to think about atmosphere and ecology; Oxygen Not Included asks you to think about thermodynamics. If the supply-chain puzzle was your favorite part, this is the deep end. Be warned: the learning curve is steep and the game does not hold your hand.

• Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
• Price: Around $24.99
• Best for: Players who love automation and don't fear spreadsheets

5. Frostpunk — Best for Narrative Tension

Frostpunk trades the space whale for a frozen apocalypse, but the emotional core is similar: you're responsible for a fragile community, and every decision has a cost. The game wraps city building in a survival narrative with moral weight, complete with a story campaign and difficult choices that shape your society.

It's more scripted and less systemic than Beyond These Stars, but if the companion relationship with Kewa was what hooked you, Frostpunk's atmosphere and stakes will land.

• Platforms: PC, consoles
• Price: Around $29.99
• Best for: Players who want story with their city building

6. Anno 1800 — Best for Large-Scale Production Chains

Anno 1800 is the production-chain game. You build islands, connect them with trade routes, and manage increasingly complex supply webs across a whole region. The scale is far larger than Beyond These Stars, and the tone is more industrial than ecological, but the logistics puzzle is the same pleasure at a bigger size.

If you finished Beyond These Stars wanting more supply-chain complexity and less survival pressure, Anno is the natural next step.

• Platforms: PC, consoles
• Price: Around $39.99 plus season passes
• Best for: Players who want sprawling logistics without the survival clock

7. Per Aspera — Best for Planetary Terraforming

Per Aspera is the most conceptually similar game here. You play as an AI managing the terraforming of Mars, building infrastructure and reshaping an entire planet over time. The planetary-scale stewardship fantasy maps closely onto Beyond These Stars' terraforming loop.

It's more of a management and narrative experience than a colony sim, and the pacing is slower, but if the idea of coaxing a dead world to life is what you're chasing, Per Aspera delivers it at planetary scale.

• Platforms: PC
• Price: Around $29.99
• Best for: Players who want terraforming as the whole game

Quick Comparison

The Bottom Line

No single game replaces Beyond These Stars — the combination of a living map, a sentient companion, and gentle stewardship is genuinely rare. But you don't need a replacement. You need the right next itch to scratch.

Start with Timberborn if terraforming was your favorite part, RimWorld if you want colony depth, and Per Aspera if planetary-scale stewardship is the fantasy you're chasing. Each one takes a piece of what makes Beyond These Stars special and builds a whole game around it.