Hey peeps! We're proud to be participating in the 2024 Women’s Day Sale, organised by WINGS, which funds indie games by women and gender diverse teams. As part of this sale, Before We Leave is a whole 75% off until 12th March! Grab it for a mate, grab it for your neighbour, shout it from the rooftops:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1073910/Before_We_Leave

But back to International Women’s Day. Two years ago, for IWD 2022, we published a blog post featuring words from each of the women here at Balancing Monkey Games. We’ve since hired two more women - Nina, our QA Analyst, and myself - so we thought we’d update things this year! Read on to hear our thoughts and feelings about the industry, and how video games have impacted our lives.


My first game related memory actually isn’t of playing a game - it's of eating an ice block. As a child, there was an ice block company that ran a competition to win a Gameboy Colour and Pokemon Silver - the latest Pokemon game. Pokemon had been an obsession of mine since I first saw it on TV, and boy did I want to catch my own. We entered, and I won. The prize arrived one morning before school. I don’t remember how that day went, but I remember racing to find new batteries, asking my mum to play for me while I had to do chores, and sneaking my Gameboy into primary school.

But one thing was missing from that game for me, and it wasn’t something I realised until I got Pokemon Crystal one year. Being able to play as a girl, it almost blew my mind. Sure, I could play as a girl in the Barbie games I played, but this was different. The character on the screen felt like me, a collection of pixels that represented me. Being different to the boys I played Pokemon with in the schoolyard, I always felt like an outsider. But within the games I played, I could fit right in.

A few years ago I bought the game Miitopia for the Switch. This was another time I felt strongly represented - I could create a character with a lazy eye! Being able to dress my character as I wish I could myself, the character becomes an extension of my being. There is something about being able to make characters that feel like me that makes me think “I am allowed to be here”.

Being neurodivergent, I always struggled fitting in, but I had much the same feelings of inclusion when joining the Balancing Monkey Games team. There were other women in the studio; I’m allowed to be here. I never get treated any differently to my co-workers, and there is a weight that is lifted off when you don’t have to worry about the impact of your gender on opportunities within your workplace.

My hopes for the future is to see more diversity within the games we play. Gender, physical attributes, clothing. We all deserve a way to express ourselves and feel included. We are all allowed to be here.



My (sometimes intense) relationship with video games started when I was very young, where I would find myself playing Tekken on my cousin’s PlayStation until my fingertips were red and raw. how thoroughly sucked in I was to such an unbecoming hobby, my parents forbade me from owning my own console until many years later - which particularly frustrated me as none of my girl friends in the 90s had access to video games themselves (and my options for mooching were therefore limited). I often had to content myself with forcing my younger sister into playing the very basic pen-and-paper games I’d make for us to play. It was a weird time for women in games, occupying an awkward space where we’d felt like outliers or hangers-on to a culture and industry that wasn’t truly “ours”.

This feeling of being an “outsider” to an already niche area meant the thought of actually working in the industry was something I’d never considered possible - a feeling that I know many of my peers share. It’s a little funny, then, that working in games has made me feel like I can be more “myself” at work than in any other job. This is particularly true about how I feel at Balancing Monkey Games, where six out of our ten employees are women (!)

A lot has been said about how representation has had a huge impact on carving out a place for women in video games. But more than just these psychological barriers for women, the material hurdles are also very real. There’s an overlap here between gendered wage gaps and financial independence, plus the burden of unpaid care & household labour, and how this all translates to less opportunities for education or the pursuit of time-intensive hobbies. I’m quite proud of BMG for acknowledging this by offering things like a four-day work week and menstrual leave, benefits which we’d (probably) be less likely to have without a woman (and mother) as Managing Director.

The advent of open source and free software has also helped immensely with inclusivity & diversity within game development, for anyone experiencing material disadvantages. There is still an utterly massive gap in the industry between OECD countries and the rest of the world, but as technology becomes more accessible, this is slowly improving. And of course, across most lower socioeconomic strata, it’s women who tend to be hit the hardest.

Finally, I’d like to list just a few women who are actively working to make the industry more accessible, through freely available resources and the communities that have been built around them. If you’re a woman looking to enter a career in games, I can’t recommend them enough.

• Victoria Tran - a guiding light for many of us in community management
  
• Freya Holmer - an excellent communicator of more “technical” concepts in game development
  
• Yasmin Curren - for when you need encouragement, and lots of resources on a broad range of topics

We’ve come a long way since the 90s (and the years Before My Time)! It’s almost dizzying to see how much things have changed.

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Thank you for reading! If you’d like to support us, we encourage you to spread the word about Before We Leave and the current sale (remember - 75% off until 12th March!) - or wishlist our upcoming game, Beyond These Stars.

Also come hang out with us on our Discord! And of course, don’t forget to peruse the rest of the games spotlighted as part of this year’s Women’s Day Sale.

See you all around!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1073910/Before_We_Leave

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2295060/Beyond_These_Stars

Hey Peeps!

Just a small patch today for you.
We have added a button on the Games main menu which will take you to the Steam Store page of our new game, Beyond These Stars, where you can Wishlist and learn more about it! We've also changed the Discord link the loading screen, as the link has changed.



Thank you for your continued feedback and support!

If you encounter any other issues with Before We Leave, please report them here.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1073910/Before_We_Leave/

We also recommend you take shelter in our Discord server with the Before We Leave community and discuss all things Before We Leave!

Kia ora everyone! I have some big announcements to make today folks! Let me dive right in.‍


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!




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!


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

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

Hey everyone,

We're back after our summer holidays! We're feeling refreshed and ready for what is probably going to be a busy year.

Project Charlie is still in Alpha, but it's coming along nicely! It's hard to believe we've been working on it for a year already.

Isaac the Code Wizard

Our lovely lead programmer and technical artist Isaac wrote a dev blog delving into the work he's been doing recently - you can read the full post over on our website, but let me post some excerpts of it here for you all.

"Last year was a blast. Finishing work on Before We Leave was bittersweet. Part of me misses working on it, but it’s been so refreshing to work on a new project, especially being a part of the development from the beginning.I’m really proud of what we’ve accomplished in the first year of development.

Before we went on break, our senior artist Tom and I worked on improving how the playable area integrates with the space whale. That involved tweaking the terrain generation and Tom working on the space whale model and texturing.

Here's what it looked like before:


and here's what it looks like now:"

An Eighth Balancing Monkey

Our once tiny team has doubled in size over the last 18 months, and we have a new addition this January - Nina, our QA/Player Support expert! She's been with us for a week already and is smashing it. Please give her a Space Whale sized welcome ❤

Discord name change

Lastly - since we'll have two games under our belt in the future, we changed the name and URL of our Discord. It's now discord.gg/balancingmonkeygames.

Thanks for reading everyone! I hope 2023 has been a prosperous and happy month for you all so far!

Cheers,
- Emily, Community Manager

Kia ora and hello Peeps!

We're proud to be apart of Steam's Base Builder Fest! Before We Leave is 65% off at the moment - if you've been wanting a sweet low price before trying it out, now's your chance.

Also I'd recommend looking at the Base Builder Fest in general. There are some supremely cool games in there for some great prices.

Last but not least - there's going to be another dev blog later this week, so stay tuned 👀

Cheers!
- Emily, Community Manager

Season's Greetings Peeps!

Before We Leave is currently 65% off during the Steam Winter Sale!

The 36 track OST is also on sale at 50% off!

Sale ends 5th of January!

Things are grinding to a halt at the office as our Christmas holidays inch closer towards us - our last day in the office for 2022 is the 16th December, and we’ll be returning on Tuesday the 10th in 2023. It has been a huge year for us at Balancing Monkey Games, though it might not look like that outwardly. We’re all looking forward to a well deserved break so we can prepare ourselves for what is looking like an absolutely massive year.

Firstly, please just... look at this. What an amazing screenshot. We're making a good looking game y'all. I'd love to know what catches your eye in this scene 👀



Secondly, our producer and social media guru Sarah is finishing out the year with one last blog post:

“Life as Producer at Balancing Monkey continues to become more and more exciting. I may not be one of the ones programming or drawing the art that’s going into this game, but seeing it evolve from where the project was in March (for example) and now December, and having a hand in that creation and design! Woah.” (read more here on our website)

On a mushy note, Sarah joined our team in September last year and was someone totally new to the games industry - I can speak for everyone at the studio when I say she’s learned so much and we’re all super proud of her!

Anyway, that's it for now - thank you all so much for your support over 2022! 2023 is going to be even more exciting.

Safe holidays to you all <3

- Emily
Community Manager

Hey Gang!

I have two developer blogs to share with you today:

Tom, our Lead Artist and Kiwi humour expert wrote about his process designing buildings for Project Charlie (the Before We Leave sequel). Here’s an excerpt from his post:

One of my jobs is to design the buildings for our next game: This means talking to Sam and the team about what properties/functions the building will have and designing it appropriately. You might find when looking at the drawings how accurate they are in terms of perspective - this is because I will go back and forth building it in a 3D programme (Maya) so I can create something that looks great from all angles, as well as fit onto a group of hexagon tiles (the tiles can make it a challenge to design sometimes as it is an odd shape).



Once the 3D draft has been made, I will usually paint over a screenshot of the 3D model in Photoshop. At this stage, this is all about showing what materials the building will use as well as if it's painted and the condition it's in. This isn't just to make a pretty picture! This image will be seen by Sam and if he likes what he sees, I will send it off to our 3D Modeller, Rafał who lives in Poland. If the concept art is clear, he should have no problem recreating a high resolution version of it to throw in the game.

That's about all I can show you all at this point because we're still keeping things pretty secret… (Full post on our website)

Thanks Tom! And last but certainly not least, Anna (aka MamaMonkey) wrote about her hectic life as our Managing Director. It’s a little lengthier than Tom’s post, so if you want to get a snapshot of how a role like this operates at a game development studio, give it a peep on our website (pun intended. You’re welcome).



That's all for now - you'll be hearing from me next week with a final post to see 2022 off.

Thanks for reading!
- Emily, Community Manager

Hey gang! It's your community manager Emily here 👋

Our creative director Sam wrote a dev blog about our new project, and I wanted to share it with you here. Enjoy <3



Hello again everyone! It’s a long time since we’ve been doing regular dev blogs, but now that we’re in the swing of creating a new game it’s time to resurrect them!

As I write this, it’s 4 or 5 weeks until we take a break for Christmas. Our new game (codenamed Project Charlie) is in development. In case you’re new here, Project Charlie is the sequel to our first game Before We Leave. It’s a chill, cosy city building game, set on the back of a massive Space Whale traveling through space. Last time, we said it was “non-violent”, then kinda had to modify that to “mostly non-violent” - Space Whales eating chunks of your planet and all that - but this time we’re planning to actually nail “non-violent” as well!

I guess you could call what we’ve got so far an “extremely early Alpha” stage - we’ve got many of the basic game systems that were in Before We Leave running in the new game - hexagonal terrain, placing and demolishing buildings, Peeps moving around to fetch and deliver resources to construct and operate buildings and so on. We’ve got a small number of people taking a look at our early builds, just to check we’re on track to make an even better game than Before We Leave.

We’re also changing and expanding what you can do in the game of course! One major new feature is the ability to change the terrain, which has all sorts of interesting consequences for the gameplay that we’re really looking forward to showing you over the coming months.

Hrm, what else? As usual, there’s all sorts of exciting things going on in the background that I can’t tell you about yet. I know that’s lame to say, but that’s the nature of game development. Sometimes there are contacts that limit what we can say, sometimes we just need to get our ducks all in one basket before showing or announcing something. But there’s definitely lots of news coming down the pipe!

RIght, I think I’ll leave it there. We’re just getting back into the swing of doing Dev Blogs, so give us some time to remember how they flow. Also, I need to go and tell the Spaceship Constructor building to wash its hair and stop being annoying :)



Okay, back to Emily now - thanks for reading folks! If you don't hear from us before the Christmas time rolls around, I hope you all have a restful and cosy holiday season.

- Emily
Community Manager :)

Greetings peeps!

Before We Leave is currently 65% off during the Steam Autumn Sale!

The 36 track OST is also on sale at 50% off!

Check out more of our on sale games here!

Sale ends November 29th