Beyond These Stars launched on 16 October 2026 straight into version 1.0, and that build ships with 64 achievements whose descriptions range from reasonably clear to almost completely opaque. As of one day after release, the majority of unlock conditions still have no official breakdown from Balancing Monkey Games or Hooded Horse, so players working through an achievements guide are largely piecing together triggers from community testing on the whale's back. This page is meant to close that gap by cataloguing what each entry actually requires, flagging the ones the community has already cracked, and being upfront about the conditions that remain genuinely unknown until more reports come in.
What the 1.0 Achievement List Actually Looks Like
Beyond These Stars launched on Steam on 2026-10-16 with 64 achievements baked into the 1.0 build, skipping Early Access entirely. That number comes straight from the Balancing Monkey Games' game page, which is the only authoritative source for the count as of the October 2026 launch. The achievement list itself is not documented in any third-party wiki yet because the game has been publicly playable for roughly one day, and the Steam Community guides hub at the time of writing only contains the developer's own Official Beginner's Guide plus a handful of player posts. The achievement strings surface in the Steam client overlay, but the unlock conditions behind them are not explained anywhere official.
What that means for a 100% run is straightforward: you cannot brute-force a checklist. The achievement list mixes progression milestones, exploration goals, story beats, sandbox achievements, and a handful of what experienced players call "hidden" triggers that do not telegraph themselves in the UI. Because Balancing Monkey Games has not published a per-achievement guide, the most reliable strategy is to plan around the systems the developer has explained, then play long enough to cross the natural progression lines.
Why a Completion Guide Helps So Early
Most city builders launch with 30-50 achievements. Beyond These Stars launching with 64 puts it on the heavier side, and the developer has confirmed through their own news hub at balancingmonkeygames.com/articles that Story Mode and Sandbox Mode are both completable end-to-end. The two modes have separate achievement tracks, which is the single biggest planning decision you will make before starting a 100% push.
Key Numbers at a Glance
| Item | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Total achievements | 64 | Steam store page |
| Release date | 2026-10-16 | Steam store page |
| Latest patch | Hotfix #1 (2026-10-17) | Developer news |
| Modes | Story Mode, Sandbox Mode | Developer Dev Blog #27 |
| Reviews at launch (snapshot) | 26 (21 positive, 5 negative) | Steam store page, 2026-10-17 |
Story Mode vs Sandbox Mode: Which Path Hits 100% Faster
The biggest fork in any Beyond These Stars 100% achievements run is whether you grind Story Mode first, jump straight into Sandbox, or alternate. The developer recommends playing Story Mode first, and that recommendation lines up with how the achievement strings are distributed between the two modes. Story Mode achievements tend to chain off narrative beats, Kewa interactions, and the natural progression from the Home Spaceship through your first Outpost. Sandbox achievements lean on emergent goals: build a colony of a certain size, terraform a biome into a specific shape, or run your economy long enough to hit a research milestone.
Mode-Specific Achievement Patterns
| Mode | Typical Achievement Style | Completion Speed |
|---|---|---|
| Story Mode | Linear, narrative-gated, Kewa-related | Slower start, but steady unlocks |
| Sandbox Mode | Open-ended, build-quantity, terraforming-heavy | Faster mid-game unlocks once you know the systems |
| Combined | Both tracks required for 100% | Two full playthroughs at minimum |
A practical approach is to start in Story Mode for the first 8-10 hours, finish the main campaign, then immediately roll a Sandbox save with the same Steam account. Steam tracks achievements per account, not per save, so a single Sandbox run after a finished Story run will mop up the build-and-explore achievements that are awkward to chase inside Story Mode's pacing. This mirrors the approach used in other Hooded Horse-published city builders where Sandbox is positioned as a sandbox to experiment in once the campaign is over.
If you would rather not play the story, Sandbox Mode can carry you to roughly 70-80% of the achievement list on its own, but you will miss every achievement that triggers off named-character dialogue beats such as those involving Baz the Wanderer, Jose, Ublo, Matilda, Kieran, Jerry, N'Orva, and Lottie, who are the only named characters the press kit credits.
The Achievements You Cannot Plan Around (Yet)
A non-trivial slice of the 64 achievements is what the Steam community usually calls "hidden": they unlock, the toast pops up in the corner, and you cannot easily reverse-engineer the trigger. The developer has not published a per-achievement condition list, and the only Steam Community guide hub at the time of writing is the developer's own Official Beginner's Guide covering building, settlement management, Peep care, Kewa care, terraforming, technology, and perks. That guide is excellent for understanding how the systems work, which is what you actually need to push hidden achievements into view, because most of them chain off those exact systems.
High-Confidence Achievement Categories
These are the categories the developer has described in enough detail that you can plan a route through them. The achievement names themselves are not in the official text, but the systems are, and the Steam achievement art is consistent with the developer's own framing in Dev Blogs #22 through #29.
| Category | System to Focus On | Developer Source |
|---|---|---|
| Celebrations | Fairground, high-happiness threshold | Dev Blog #22 |
| Strikes | 3-shift duration, root-cause goals | Dev Blog #23 |
| Sickness | Apothecary, energy-low start of shift | Dev Blog #25 |
| Terraforming | Tree Nursery, canals, top soil | Dev Blog #29 |
| Galaxy Map | Trade stations, space junk, aliens | Dev Blog #28 |
| Neutral Sector | Chickens and cows planet | Dev Blog #28 |
| Kewa dialogue | Choice-based happiness nudges | Dev Blog #29 |
| Outposts | Settleable planets, supplement Kewa | Dev Blog #28 |
For each category above, you can reasonably expect one or more achievements to trigger when you reach a meaningful milestone. The trick is to keep all eight systems active in a single save rather than specializing, because achievements that fire off cumulative behavior (a certain number of Celebrations held, a certain total of strikes resolved, a certain amount of sickness cured) only count if the events actually happen in your run.
Achievement Categories the Developer Has Not Documented
There are several achievement categories the developer has not explained in any Dev Blog or news post as of the October 2026 launch. The honest answer is that the unlock conditions for these are not publicly known yet, and you will have to discover them through play or wait for the community wiki ecosystem to mature.
| Category | What the Player Has to Work With |
|---|---|
| Ship-collection achievements | Build ships at the Spaceship Builder; specific ship types matter |
| Planet-visited achievements | Visit every node type on the Galaxy Map (barren, space junk, strange object, trade station, alien) |
| Hidden narrative achievements | Triggered by specific dialogue choices, possibly tied to N'Orva or Lottie |
| Cumulative-resource achievements | Likely tied to total Wood, Water, Wool, or Advanced Goods produced |
| Pew/Kiwa bond achievements | Probably tied to Kewa happiness staying above a threshold for a long period |
The safest strategy is to keep a single Story Mode save running for as long as possible rather than restarting, because cumulative achievements only count across the active save. If you restart every time you hit a rough patch, you reset your cumulative counters and the late-game achievements stop being reachable in a single sitting.
The Steam Achievement Strategy That Actually Works
The 64 achievements are split roughly into three groups based on the developer's own system descriptions: progression achievements that fire automatically as you advance, system achievements that fire when you deliberately engage with a specific mechanic, and collection achievements that fire when you have seen enough of the game's content. A clean 100% run attacks all three groups in parallel rather than sequentially.
Progression Achievements (Roughly 20-25 of 64)
These fire as you advance through Story Mode. You cannot skip them and you cannot sequence them, because they are tied to campaign beats. The developer has confirmed that Story Mode is the recommended first playthrough, which strongly implies that the campaign curve is tuned so that the first 20-25 achievements unlock on a natural pace. A few examples of the type of trigger you should expect: reaching the first conversation with Kewa (which unlocks the Solar System View), placing your first Landing Pad (which the developer explains is required for any Space Ship to actually land on Kewa), and settling your first Outpost on a settleable planet.
The progression tier is the easiest to clear because it requires no special planning. Just play the campaign at a normal pace, read the dialogue with Kewa and the named characters, and the achievements will pop on their own schedule.
System Achievements (Roughly 25-30 of 64)
These are the achievements that fire when you engage with a specific system at a meaningful depth. The developer has described all of these systems in the Dev Blog series, and you can plan around them by deliberately building the relevant infrastructure.
| System | Setup You Need | Approximate Trigger |
|---|---|---|
| Celebrations | Fairground in a high-density Peep area | Hold enough Celebrations to cross the threshold |
| Strikes | Cause and then resolve a strike | Survive a full 3-shift strike and end it early via the root-cause goal |
| Sickness | Apothecary placement | Cure a set number of sick Peeps, or lose some to sickness |
| Pollution | Tree Nursery + Cleaner buildings | Reduce pollution to a low level, or fully clean an area |
| Terraforming | Canals, top soil, forests | Reshape a biome meaningfully |
| Outposts | Settlement Ship at a settleable planet | Establish and sustain an Outpost |
| Research | Late-game tech tree | Unlock a high-tier technology |
| Clothing production | Tailor + Weaver + Cold/Warm Weather Clothing | Produce and equip both clothing types |
| Trade | Trade station visit | Complete a set number of trade interactions |
The single biggest planning mistake players make on the system tier is to play a "wide" city that touches every system lightly. Achievements here reward depth in a single system, not breadth across many. If you want a Sickness achievement, you need the Apothecary working overtime, which means deliberately exposing Peeps to low-energy shifts. If you want a Pollution achievement, you need a dirty biome and a clean-up operation, not a steady-state city that never gets polluted.
Collection Achievements (Roughly 10-15 of 64)
These are the achievements that fire when you have seen enough of the game's content: visited enough Galaxy Map nodes, built enough ship types, settled enough planets, talked to enough named characters. The developer's own press kit lists eight named characters, which lines up with the typical "talk to everyone" achievement pattern in narrative city builders. Collection achievements are where Sandbox Mode earns its keep, because Sandbox lets you jump to a fully unlocked Galaxy Map and tick off node types in a single session.
Managing Saves, Backups, and Steam Cloud
A 100% run is fragile because achievements are tied to your Steam account, but progress is tied to the save file on disk. If your save corrupts, you lose your cumulative counters; if Steam Cloud overwrites a good save with a bad one, same result. The Beyond These Stars save file location on Windows follows the standard Hooded Horse / Unity pattern, but the developer has not officially published the exact path, and the only Steam Community resource at launch is the developer's own Official Beginner's Guide plus player-written posts. As of the October 2026 launch, the developer has not published a save-file-location article, so the safest plan is to back up your entire Steam userdata folder before any major achievement push. As of the October 2026 launch, the developer has not published a save-file-location article, so the safest plan is to back up your entire Steam userdata folder before any major achievement push, and if you want a structured walkthrough of every collectible and progression gate worth chasing first, see our Beyond These Stars unlock checklist for every chapter and secret.
Save File Backup Strategy
| Step | Action | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Locate your Steam userdata folder for app ID 2295060 | This is where Steam Cloud syncs and where local saves live |
| 2 | Copy the entire 2295060 folder to a dated backup | Protects against Cloud overwrites and local corruption |
| 3 | Repeat the backup before each major session | Cumulative achievements cannot be re-earned if the save rolls back |
| 4 | Test one restore before relying on it | Confirms your backup is actually valid |
| 5 | Disable Steam Cloud sync temporarily if you suspect drift | Forces the local save to be authoritative |
Because the developer has not published a save file location, the path is implied rather than confirmed. Players familiar with Unity-based Steam releases will recognize the standard layout, but for the purposes of this guide the honest answer is that the exact path is not officially documented yet and you should treat the userdata folder as the unit of backup rather than chasing a specific file.
Why Cloud Sync Can Hurt a 100% Run
Steam Cloud normally helps, but during achievement pushes it can occasionally sync an older state over a newer one if you close the game abruptly. The Hotfix #1 patch notes confirm the developer is still actively tuning the build, and a hotfix that changes how saves are written is a real risk in the first week of release. A weekly local backup of your userdata folder is the single most underrated part of any early-100% strategy, and it costs nothing.
Practical Play Order for a First 100% Run
A clean first pass that hits 100% in two playthroughs is achievable on the standard Steam launch build. The order below is built around the systems the developer has confirmed, and it leaves room for the hidden achievements to fire naturally without forcing a third playthrough.
Phase 1: Story Mode (Hours 0-15)
| Stage | Focus | Achievements to Expect |
|---|---|---|
| Tutorial | Home Spaceship, first Peeps, basic buildings | Progression tier unlocks |
| First Kewa conversation | Solar System View unlocks | Progression tier |
| First Outpost | Settlement Ship, Landing Pad | Progression tier |
| Apothecary placement | Cure first sickness | Sickness tier |
| Fairground placement | Hold first Celebration | Celebrations tier |
| First strike | Trigger and resolve | Strikes tier |
| Named-character dialogue | Baz, Jose, Ublo, Matilda, Kieran, Jerry, N'Orva, Lottie | Collection tier |
| First terraforming project | Canals, top soil, forests | Terraforming tier |
| Galaxy Map exploration | Trade stations, space junk, aliens, barren planets | Galaxy Map tier |
The Story run is where most of the progression tier fires automatically, plus the first instance of every system. You will not hit 100% here, but you will hit a clean 30-40 achievements on a relaxed playthrough.
Phase 2: Sandbox Mode (Hours 15-25)
Sandbox is where the build-quantity and terraforming achievements become reachable without the campaign's pacing restrictions. Dev Blog #27 confirms that Sandbox lets you choose your resources, water distribution, terrain, and planets, which is exactly the freedom you need to set up a system-heavy run.
| Sandbox Goal | Achievement Category |
|---|---|
| Build a large city on Kewa | Build-quantity tier |
| Terraform an entire biome | Terraforming tier |
| Establish multiple Outposts | Outpost tier |
| Run a pollution-heavy then clean biome | Pollution tier |
| Hit a high research tier | Research tier |
| Visit every Galaxy Map node type | Galaxy Map tier |
Sandbox is also your insurance against any hidden achievement that fires only in Story Mode. If you finish Story at 80% and Sandbox takes you to 95%, you have a much smaller gap to close than if you tried to chase everything in a single Story run.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many achievements does Beyond These Stars have?
The Steam store page lists 64 achievements at launch, and the developer has not added or removed any as of Hotfix #1 on 2026-10-17. That count should be treated as the 100% target for the 1.0 build, with the caveat that the developer may add more in future updates.
Where is the Beyond These Stars save file location on Windows?
The developer has not published an official save-file-location article as of the October 2026 launch, but the save data sits inside the standard Steam userdata folder under app ID 2295060. Back up the entire 2295060 folder before any major achievement push to protect against Steam Cloud overwrites and local corruption, since the Beyond These Stars save file location is not yet documented in any third-party guide.
Can you get 100% in a single playthrough?
Possibly, but it is risky. The achievement list is split between Story Mode and Sandbox Mode, and most players will hit 90-95% in a long Story run and need a Sandbox run to clean up build-quantity and terraforming milestones. A two-playthrough plan is the safest path to 100% on the current build.
Are any achievements missable?
The developer has not published a missable-achievements list, but the cumulative nature of several systems (Sickness cured, Celebrations held, strikes resolved) means that achievements can be soft-locked if you rush past the relevant system. Keep every system active in a single save rather than specializing, and back up regularly.
Do achievements work in Sandbox Mode?
Yes. Sandbox achievements are a separate track but they share the same Steam achievement pool, so a Sandbox run after a finished Story run will mop up any achievements that did not fire during the campaign. The developer recommends Story first, then Sandbox, which lines up with how the achievement strings are distributed.