Destruction sandbox Besiege's new space DLC gets far bigger than anything you've seen before

Besiege: The Broken Beyond is working on a completely new level of scale. The next expansion for one of the most explosively satisfying sandbox games on PC is taking us off world for an adventure among the stars. The introduction of water in The Splintered Sea might have changed how you thought about constructing machines, but the move into a galaxy of constantly shifting gravity is going to present even more, and much bigger, challenges to overcome.

Besiege developer Spiderling Studios says the new expansion results in playable environments at a scope "much greater than any previously - helping them feel more like miniature worlds than isolated dioramas in a void." With all manner of asteroids, planets, and other floating debris of dramatically different sizes, effects such as gravity will play heavily into how you can approach any situation.

"When it comes to physics our goal with Besiege has always been to create a middle ground between realistic simulation and quirky physics," Spiderling remarks. It's carrying that philosophy into the DLC: "The Broken Beyond offers you the closest experience to a true Newtonian simulation, pushing the laws of physics into the realms of mind-bending wackiness."

All sufficiently large objects in The Broken Beyond, such as planets and asteroids, will exert a gravitational field based on the inverse square law as described by Newton, which effectively means their pull on other nearby things (like your machine) decreases rapidly as you move further away from them.

Each different shape uses a different gravitational field. Large, spherical planets will allow you to land on them in a "realistic" manner, while planetary discs might provide sufficient attraction for you to drive around them, but not enough to stop you from falling to the world they're surrounding should you slip off the edge.

"For more unusually shaped objects like lumpy asteroids, we combine several gravitational fields together with some clever maths to make them feel realistic to drive on," Spiderling explains. "Platforms use a cylindrical form of gravity, where objects are pulled towards the faces of a cylindrical shape. This keeps the gravitational forces consistent, rather than strongest at the center of the platform, and causes orbiting objects to follow the cylindrical shape."

All large objects in a single level will exert their gravitational forces at all times, giving you the ability "to jump between asteroids or establish complex orbital paths around several celestial objects at once." Naturally, Spiderlings isn't going to make it smooth sailing, however. "Space debris litters the star system - countless rocks to collide with your ship, meteoroids to push around or smash into one another, and even moons that you can send crashing out of orbit."

Besiege: The Broken Beyond is set to launch in the second quarter of 2026. The team promises more deep-dive looks into other systems in the run-up to launch; next week it will be talking about the way different planetary atmospheres can affect your machines, and "maybe we'll take a look at a miniature singularity."