Version 2026.8.19 – Packing light for the browser 🎧

August 22, 2026

A small update with one big number: the browser version of Blocks Beyond the Stars now loads about 40 MB instead of 208 MB on your first visit. On glitch.fun and on our own Play page that means roughly ten seconds to the main menu instead of close to a minute (or ten on a bad day). 🚀

What was going on? Our music. All 40 songs of the game's library sat inside the game package — 164 MB, of which one play session hears maybe three to five tracks. At some point Justus, staring at the loading bar, asked whether the game was broken. It wasn't, but it sure felt like it. 😅 The songs now live as separate files next to the game and are only loaded when you reach their moment — main menu, planet, space, cave. The next track is fetched in the background while the current one is still playing, and songs that are no longer playing are released by the browser instead of hoarding them all in memory. The Glitch progress bar that loved to stall at 92 % has lost its sting, too. 🎶

On the first test run on glitch.fun we found one small straggler and fixed it right away: the browser handed a song over before it had finished unpacking it — so the game thought it was "already over" and immediately loaded the next one. Now it politely waits until the song is really there. 🩹

Nothing changes for desktop players — except that the installer gets a little smaller. No new protocol, no new network messages, saves stay as they are; if you host a server, there is nothing you need to do for this update. So: open the browser, have a listen, fly out. 🌌✨