From pressing F1 to an answer in the game: how your reports become fixes 💬🛠️

November 7, 2026

In July we told you here how friends take our game apart – and why we ask them to. Since then, many people write to us every week, and "just press F1" has turned into a route with five stops. Here's how it goes.

Stop 1: Press F1 (F2 in the browser). A small form opens. You write what's wrong and send it. You don't need an account for that. In singleplayer, the game attaches a small snapshot: where you are standing right now and what you are carrying. That way we can look at the spot ourselves. The report lands in our own inbox for player reports.

Stop 2: Read and understand. We read every report and then look for the cause. A single sentence often hides more than one bug. For every cause we open a task on our public GitHub, where anyone can read what we're working on right now.

Stop 3: Fix and check. Before a fix is allowed into the game, it has to pass our automated tests. When needed, we build the whole game again and check for ourselves.

Stop 4: Ship it. We release new versions very often; in October alone there were 33. That's why a fix often reaches you the very next day, sometimes even the same day.

Stop 5: The answer arrives in the game. Since the end of August we can answer you right inside the game, in exactly the world you wrote from. The answer shows up as a line in the HUD. There's also a window with the whole conversation and a note saying "Fixed in version …". If we have a question, you can write back there too. Our rule: we only answer once the fix is really done. 💬

One sentence, seven fixes. An example from October: on a world without breathable air, Lyxette had walled up a big cave and wanted to fill it with air as a base. But the cave stayed airless, and the game only said the room wasn't sealed. That same day we split the problem into seven parts and fixed them. Rooms may now be four times as big, the air reaches as far as your build does, and allies share their air. On top of that, the game now tells you why a room gets no air: it's too big, too far away or open somewhere. Everything was in version 2026.10.15.

One wish, a new feeling. On November 7, Justus wrote via F1: "Like in Zelda." He wanted to be able to run, with stamina that drains for running and climbing alike. Now you run one and a half times as fast while holding Shift, and a small bar under the crosshair shows how much breath you have left. That came with version 2026.11.9, the very same day. 🏃

And sometimes we say no. Not every wish fits the game. Lyxette wished for a whole planetary empire. We honestly explained to him that Blocks Beyond the Stars isn't meant to become a strategy game, and what might work instead. That's an answer too, and an important one.

Thank you to everyone who writes to us! 🙌

• Lyxette sent us almost a hundred reports between late August and mid-September, on 18 out of 24 days. After a break he came back on October 13 ("I'm back, as promised"), and since then he's been reporting almost every other day. Many of the latest releases carry his handwriting.

• Justus tests almost every day, and not alone: Aasim, Lorenzo and Jonah have played with him and sent reports, sometimes together in one world on the home network.

• Verena showed us where VEGA's hints came too early.

• Milan is our newest tester. After dying, the camera kept turning, and a click mined a block on the side. We fixed that first report the same day, and Milan has been in the credits ever since.

• And then there are the kids from our school club. Every Wednesday they show us everything that can go wrong in the browser and on school computers.

What makes a good report. You don't need to know anything technical. But a few things help us a lot:

• One thing per report. If you have two problems, simply press F1 twice.

• What did you do? For example: "I pressed E in front of the door."

• What did you expect, and what happened instead?

• Press F1 right at the spot if you can. Then the snapshot shows exactly the place where it happened.

Often a single sentence is enough, and we'll find the rest. So if something bugs you or you have an idea, press F1. We read everything. 💬

Justus and Marcel