For full campaigns like this, the pickings are pretty slim, as far as I know Kingmaker is the only full campaign that takes on the whole sandbox approach for a complete storyline.
There's some sandboxy individual modules out there though, such as off the top of my head Red Hand of Doom.
Frog God Games does Hexcrawl Chronicles here. I own a couple and they are really well done. I generally run hexcrawls so I get good mileage out of that. There are also several good resources out on google that will help you out (The Alexandrian, Hexcrawl.com, Dispatches from Kickassistan, The Welsh Piper). A whole wealth of information, most of it system agnostic or OSR. Enjoy
Something my group of players is contemplating for the future, because we love Kingmaker so much, is to restage it in Shokuro say 30ish years before the current year (around the time that the samurai Shokuro was trying to establish the land) and reskin it as an eastern campaign. The players are selected to tame part of the land for Lord Shokuro.
The plan is to enlarge the Shokuro part of the map, overlay some hexes, and place encounters and go! Bandits, ronin, hobgoblins, naga, ninja, evil monks, what more could you ask for?
We call it Daimyomaker.
If you want to convert/use an existing framework but system import, Bloodstone Pass (from 1st edition) is very similar in scope/premise to Kingmaker.
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The good news is that it's not really difficult to remove the hex out of the sandbox. The hexes are simply there as an abstract method of separating encounters and such.
The Alexandrian's Gamemastery 101 page has a wealth of what you are looking for. Three Clue Rule, Node-Based Design, and Don't Prep Plots are what you are probably looking for. It is his method of allowing player's choices to really matter and shape the plot. A bit of a read but it is a very well-written group of articles that will help you out, guaranteed.
I'm also wondering if there are other sandbox campaigns that aren't about kingdoms or hexes.
Good modules that have a solid setting, a metaplot, but still a sandbox for players to play in.
As well as GMing Kingmaker, I'm playing through the Serpent's Skull adventure path (our gaming group rotates through GMs/campaigns, with each game running an "episode" of 4-6 consecutive sessions before we rotate to the next campaign).
We're only at the start of the second module of Serpent's Skull, but the first module ("Souls for Smuggler's Shiv") was pretty sandbox-y while having an overarching plot. Your characters start off shipwrecked on a jungle island in mysterious circumstances. As well as worrying about survival and rescue for yourselves and your fellow NPC castaways, there's a substantial map to explore with lots of things to find and do, and your characters have limited knowledge of what's out there. There's also the mystery of the shipwreck hanging over you, and you can sniff out and pursue the threads of that plot.
I'm not sure how linear the later modules get, though.
The Alexandrian's Gamemastery 101 page has a wealth of what you are looking for. Three Clue Rule, Node-Based Design, and Don't Prep Plots are what you are probably looking for.
There are some fascinating essays on that site - I spent all of Sunday reading them. Thanks for sharing the link, Odraude!