Beyond These Stars Sandbox Mode: Settings and Build Tips

What Beyond These Stars Sandbox Mode Changes

Put cows on a space whale, reshape the terrain, and build the colony you actually want in Beyond These Stars sandbox mode. Your starting resources, water distribution, and planet settings matter because they shape both your construction space and the supply chains that keep your Peeps working. Beyond These Stars sandbox mode gives you control over those choices, with options to preserve technology progression or begin with every building unlocked.

Your home is Kewa, a sentient Space Whale whose back supports your growing civilization. That makes city planning more involved than finding room for another factory: you also have an ecosystem to maintain, breathable territory to expand, and residents who need food, water, housing, and rest.

Sandbox lets you customize the conditions surrounding those systems. You can bring resources onto Kewa that would normally require exploration in Story Mode, choose the terrain, and configure additional planets.

Feature	Story Mode	Sandbox Mode
Structure	A narrative journey with an ending	A customizable colony setup
Resources on Kewa	Some resources require discoveries on other planets	Choose which resources are available on Kewa
Building access	Progress through technology requirements	Option to unlock all buildings at the start
Learning systems	Structured introduction with optional tutorial helpers	Configure your own starting conditions

Story Mode introduces the systems at a deliberate pace. Start there if you need help understanding production, power, and Peep needs, then use sandbox to experiment with the parts you enjoy.

Beyond These Stars is scheduled to release on October 16, 2026.

Customize Kewa, Resources, and Planets

The defining feature of Beyond These Stars sandbox mode is control over the world your colony inhabits. You can adjust both Kewa and the planets available for settlement, so think about the whole production network before choosing your settings.

Choose resources around the chains you want to build

Sandbox resource choices include deposits and animals such as sheep and cows. In Story Mode, discovering planetary resources opens additional production possibilities; sandbox lets you place selected resources directly on Kewa.

Choose cows if you want to explore milk production through Pastures. Include sheep when planning a wool supply for clothing. Add the relevant resource deposits when your goal is to experiment with industrial buildings.

Unlocking a factory and supplying it are separate concerns. Plan for its inputs before covering your starting area with advanced buildings.

Give terrain and water equal attention

Terrain options include hills, flat ground, tall spires, and mesas. Water distribution also lets you choose whether to start with a river.

World setting	What you can customize	Planning tip
Kewa resources	Animals and resource deposits	Include inputs for the production chains you want to explore
Water distribution	A starting river or no river	Keep water access in mind when planning farms and settlement space
Terrain	Flat land, hills, spires, and mesas	Leave room for roads around large buildings
Planets	Number, resources, biome, and terrain	Choose resources that complement your colony on Kewa

Flat ground gives you room to explore compact layouts. Use hilly terrain or mesas when you want to work around elevation and experiment with landscaping.

Keep forests in your expansion plans. Trees support the atmosphere, provide wood, and gradually absorb pollution. Removing them affects more than your lumber supply.

Planet settings deserve the same care. Each planet has its own difficulty indicator, alongside an overall difficulty summary. Read those indicators after changing resources, biomes, or terrain, especially when combining several demanding choices.

Difficulty Settings, Building Unlocks, and World Choices

Beyond These Stars sandbox mode can retain the familiar climb from basic survival to advanced industry, or open every building so you can focus on layout.

Your world selections also influence difficulty. Individual planets have difficulty indicators, and the setup provides a summary of the overall challenge.

Setup choice	Available customization	What to consider
Resource deposits	Choose deposits available on Kewa	Match deposits to industrial inputs
Animals	Include sheep and cows on Kewa	Plan Pastures and the buildings that process their products
Water distribution	Start with a river or without one	Consider water access and ecosystem restoration
Kewa terrain	Choose flat ground, hills, spires, or mesas	Plan building footprints and connected roads
Planet count	Choose how many planets are available	Consider how much planetary development you want to manage
Planet conditions	Choose resources, biome, and terrain	Review each planet’s difficulty indicator
Unlock all buildings	Option to open every building at the start	Decide whether to retain technology requirements

Unlock all buildings to explore advanced layouts

Normal technology progression involves meeting production requirements. In the preview build, producing five wood with a Woodcutter opens access to the Mine. Producing five iron ore then satisfies the requirements for the Burner Generator and Ore Smelter.

Enable Unlock all buildings when your goal is to explore the wider construction menu without working through those requirements.

Keep it disabled when you want your colony’s production milestones to guide expansion. Sandbox supports that style of play too; choosing the mode does not automatically remove the technology tree.

Plan operating requirements alongside building access

An Ore Smelter needs iron ore and power, while a Toolsmith uses wood, iron, and power. Opening the construction menu gives you access to those structures; their recipes still connect them to the rest of your economy.

Build a complete production chain before repeating it across the map. Check the materials entering each building, the goods leaving it, and the byproducts that need storage or further processing.

For clothing production, wool from sheep passes through a Weaver to become fabric, which a Tailor uses for clothing. Include sheep in your resource choices and leave space for those connected buildings when planning that chain.

Keep water and organic materials in mind for ecosystem projects, too. Plan those inputs alongside the land you want to restore.

Set Up Your Sandbox Around a Clear Goal

Choose what you want to accomplish before starting a new colony. Beyond These Stars sandbox mode offers enough flexibility to support decorative construction, gradual progression, and demanding terrain experiments.

Use the following configurations as starting suggestions.

Colony goal	Suggested configuration	What to plan
Explore city layouts	Unlock all buildings and select flat terrain	Roads, building footprints, and residential space
Keep gradual progression	Leave the option to unlock all buildings disabled	Basic supplies and connected production chains
Practice cleaner industry	Choose deposits for the production chains you want to study	Cleanup coverage, waste storage, and power
Experiment with terrain	Select hills, spires, or mesas	Routes, elevation changes, and landscaping
Develop planetary outposts	Customize complementary resources across planets	Shipping, ports, and supplies for settlements

For a decorative colony, unlock all buildings and leave space around housing for Wild Flowers and Hedge Gardens. Place decorations near residential areas to support Peep happiness while arranging the settlement.

For gradual progression, keep the technology requirements enabled. Customize the starting world while letting production milestones determine when new buildings become available.

For a logistics exercise, distribute useful resources across Kewa and different planets. Outposts can supplement the resources available on your whale, while shipping connects their production to the main colony.

Avoid selecting every difficult option at once while learning. Try an unfamiliar terrain layout with resources for your intended production chains, or explore industrial layouts on flat construction space. Change a major challenge between colonies so you can see how it affects your city.

In Beyond These Stars sandbox mode, a resource-rich world can simplify access to materials, but you still need to organize the buildings that turn those materials into useful goods.

When developing outposts, plan supplies in both directions. Planetary settlements can need construction materials from Kewa before their own production is ready to send useful resources back. Keep that exchange in mind when choosing each planet’s resources.

Use manual shipping for specific deliveries and automated shipping for ongoing supplies. Plan Space Ports and Landing Pads alongside the factories that depend on imported materials.

Keep Your Colony Working as It Expands

Construction freedom is useful when you understand why a colony stops producing. Before adding another factory, check roads, power, staffing, inputs, and output storage.

Plan roads and adjacency together

Most working buildings need road access. In the preview build, roads cost no resources, but long routes still mean longer trips for Peeps.

Lay out the road network before filling every nearby tile. Preserve connections between housing, food production, storage, and industry.

Read each building’s adjacency effects before committing to a dense arrangement. In the preview build:

• A Potato Patch beside a Water Pump gains 20% production speed.
• Neighboring Potato Patches lose 20% speed but gain 30% potato output.
• A Woodcutter beside at least five trees gains 30% wood output.
• A Woodcutter beside another Woodcutter loses 20% speed.

These effects involve tradeoffs. Compare speed and output when arranging farms, and preserve tree clusters around Woodcutters.

Connect power before expanding industry

Early power transmission works through directly adjacent buildings. Buildings receiving power can pass it to other adjacent buildings, allowing a Generator, Ore Smelter, and Toolsmith to form a connected chain.

Position the chain where it has both road access and room for additional structures.

Keep polluting production away from residential routes where the terrain allows. Peeps lose happiness when passing through polluted tiles, so factory placement affects the journey to work as well as the surrounding land.

Manage byproducts alongside useful output

Industrial processes produce waste as well as goods. Ore Smelters produce soot, and Toolsmiths produce slag. Output storage and delivery settings are part of keeping those buildings operating.

Inspect a stalled building before replacing it. Check whether it lacks an input, has full output storage, needs workers, or requires a functioning power connection.

Use storage allocations deliberately, and review the controls for fetching inputs and delivering output. Reserve capacity for byproducts alongside construction materials and food.

Some later processes reuse waste. Follow those connections when planning advanced industry.

Beyond These Stars sandbox mode also gives you room to practice environmental management. Place Cleaners within range of industry, preserve forests, and inspect pollution overlays as production grows.

Keep housing, food, water, and worker energy in the same expansion plan. Adding buildings creates more work; your Peeps also need time and resources to recover between shifts.

FAQ

Does Beyond These Stars sandbox mode let you unlock every building?

Yes. Enable Unlock all buildings during setup to access every building from the beginning. Leave it disabled to keep technology progression based on production requirements.

Do unlocked buildings still need production inputs?

Yes. Production recipes use their required inputs. An Ore Smelter needs iron ore and power, while a Toolsmith needs wood, iron, and power. Plan supplies and power for the buildings you place.

Can you put cows and sheep on Kewa?

Yes. Sandbox resource customization includes cows and sheep, along with resource deposits. Choose them during setup when you want to build production chains around those animals on Kewa.

Can you start without a river?

Yes. Water distribution settings let you choose a starting river or no river. Consider water access when configuring the world and planning your settlement, farms, and ecosystem restoration.