Beyond These Stars Sandbox Mode: Toggles and Setup

Yes — Beyond These Stars has a sandbox mode. When you start a new game you are offered story mode, sandbox mode, and the tutorial (which the game recommends first if you haven't finished it). The heart of the mode is a pair of switches at the bottom of the sandbox setup screen: Unlock all buildings and Instant construction.

This description comes from a community first-look video, "Can You Build a City on a Space Whale? | Beyond These Stars First Look", recorded on a preview build roughly two weeks before the game's 16 October 2026 release. The creator called it a "first look" rather than a review, so treat the option names and layout as a snapshot of that build.

What the sandbox setup screen lets you change

The creator scrolled through the sandbox options and pointed out a few groups rather than listing every field. The ones he called out:

• World generation — a setting for how many different planets you can find. He also thought he saw a choice involving more than one space whale, but flagged that as uncertain rather than confirming it.
• A difficulty rating — a general difficulty selector, with finer sliders underneath.
• Toxic tile generation speed — including an option to turn it off entirely, which he set to "never" in the menu.
• Pollution rate — adjustable downward if you want industry to be gentler on Kewa.
• Demolition resources — choose whether demolishing a building returns all, half, or none of its materials.
• Starting resources — you can start with extra.
• Repair costs — how many resources repairs consume.
• Unlock all buildings and Instant construction — the two at the bottom that most change how the mode plays.

What the two big switches actually do

Unlock all buildings removes the technology tree as a gate: everything is available from the start of the run instead of being earned by producing goods and unlocking nodes.

Instant construction removes the build wait. In the video the creator tested it by placing a jeweler — an expensive late building — and then spamming several more. Nothing was deducted from his stockpile and the buildings appeared immediately. He explicitly said he wasn't sure whether the switch simply skips the wait or also bypasses the material check, so if you're planning around resources, verify that in your own save.

What sandbox leaves out

The narrative beats are tied to the story/tutorial run. The creator noted that the pop-up events and quest steps he was working through — the ones that tell you to build a cleaner, house your remaining Peeps, and so on — do not appear in sandbox mode. Sandbox is a free-form colony rather than a guided campaign.

Related modes, and how they differ

Keep these separate from sandbox proper, since they are chosen from the same new-game menu:

• Story mode — the campaign framing; this is what the tutorial runs inside.
• Tutorial — the recommended first run, with step-by-step objectives.
• Scenarios — the creator mentioned custom scenarios you can set up from the menu, which he described as a separate setup path from the sandbox options above.

If you want a comparison point for the other modes, see Beyond These Stars demo and Beyond These Stars multiplayer.

Practical tips

• If you can't find the two switches, look under the difficulty options. The creator missed them on his first pass through the menu and only found them after opening the difficulty section — they sit at the bottom of that list, not on the top-level screen.
• Want a sandbox that still plays like a game? Leave both switches off. The creator described this as a legitimate way to play: you still gather resources and work up through the tech tree (he counted 154 perks in the tree, as an informal count), just without story objectives.
• Want to design rather than manage? Turn both on. That was the creator's plan for his follow-up video: everything unlocked, later technologies available, and a colony built purely to look good on Kewa's back.
• Drowning in pollution pressure? The toxic tile generation speed can be set to never in the sandbox menu, which the creator treated as the main relief valve for players who don't want to fight the ecosystem. That is an option he read in the menu, not a long-run balance test.
• Choosing a sandbox run for a specific idea? The planet-count setting is the lever he pointed to for players who want more outposts to find, so it's worth deciding before you start rather than restarting later.

Version note

The option names above reflect a preview build of Beyond These Stars. As of 2026-10-17, the Steam community hub carries release-day posts about the 1.0 launch, a hotfix, and a beginner's guide, but those posts do not describe the sandbox setup screen — so if a switch has been renamed or moved since release, the in-game difficulty options are the place to check.