Build the life - and home - of your dreams in Starsand Island
Chinese developer, Seed Lab, has today unveiled a range of comprehensive and richly featured construction and DIY customization modes for its upcoming life sim, Starsand Island. The extensive functionality will enable players to unlock their full creativity and build the house of their dreams when the game launches on PC and consoles in early 2026.
As revealed at gamescom, three different construction modes will be available in Starsand Island from launch:
Free-view building: Gives players the ability to intricately design and construct their dream home on their Starsand Island plot.
Character perspective: Enables players to decorate and furnish the interior and exterior of their homestead.
Local view: Allows players to decorate smaller spaces, such as fishtanks.
The free-view building mode is a suite of construction tools, including a range of differently shaped objects, to empower players to create everything from grand manors, Tudor-style houses, to stylish mid-century bungalows and cottagecore dwellings. Options to landscape the building’s surroundings will also be available, with decking, fencing, banners, and more helping to provide maximum ‘curb appeal’ on the island.
Players will be able to save and share their creations through Starsand Island’s ‘Blueprints Library’; these construction plans include everything from the building’s structure, together with object placements, decoration styles, and more, enabling others to download and add them into their own idyllic, pastoral paradise. Pre-designed ‘Official Blueprints’ will also be acquirable from NPCs in the game, giving players strong foundations to tweak their look, or provide inspiration for their own grand designs.
Starsand Island’s free-view construction mode features:
Building texture: Players can ‘paint’ buildings to create different period houses and styles, with eight different textures, including wood grain, brick, stone, paint (including gloss, matte, and metallic), as well as rough or micro cement, and ceramics.
Day/Night cycle: Adjust the time of day in construction mode to see how your build looks at any hour of the day, midnight to midnight, from the break of dawn, high noon, golden hour, or the final rays of sunlight.
Blueprints: Pre-designed homes can be acquired from NPCs in the game as blueprints, while players can also save their own creations and share them in a Blueprints Library for others to download, edit, and use for themselves.
Batch editing: Gives players the ability to select or demolish large portions of their construction, saving time before taking the building’s design in a different direction… or starting again from scratch.
Richardo Wang, Creative Director at Seed Lab, said: “Creating a perfect, pastoral paradise takes more than growing vegetables and making friends with fellow islanders. It is about being able to create your dream house, where every room, every window and door, and every decoration is just as you imagined. Giving players that ability is a wonderful goal to set ourselves, as well as the broader customization of vehicles, pets, and their own character avatar we have in Starsand Island.”
Goltan Gao, Technical Director at Seed Lab, added: “From the beginning, we aspired to create a beautiful life sim that would enable players to create their ideal home. We created a bespoke game engine for Starsand Island that would give them the creative tools to do just that, as well as share them with friends and the wider community. Even as we’re developing the game, our in-house teams have been crafting a magnificent variety of homes and styles, and we are excited to see what our players will come up with once Starsand Island launches.”