Version 2026.8.21 – The big bundle: crews, a boat, a sentry post and a safer chat 📦

August 25, 2026

After the update marathon of the past weeks, Justus asked the fair question: "So when is there something new to do?" 😄 So we sat down, wrote up where the game is wide but shallow — and spent three days building 26 pieces of it. This is by far the biggest update since the constellation release, and above all it does one thing: it gives you more reasons to stay in one place, and more reasons to play together. 🚀

Let's start at home. Your base can defend itself now: the new sentry post (workshop, blueprint after the heal tank) shoots hostile machines in line of sight — no power, no ammo, and it leaves players, pets, traders and a robber who is still talking alone. If you like it tense, switch on the new world rule "Base visitors" (off by default): now and then two bandit scouts wander up to your fence, stand there a minute and leave again — never inside, never taking anything. Your companions finally have a job: they fetch packets, warn you of enemies with an amber "!" (and a growl 🐾), stall robbers, ward off bandits at high bond and, penned, deliver their produce every ten minutes. And you can feed them: any of the three baits adds +5 bond; a holiday costs the perks, never the friendship. On top of that, two new crops (grain and a mushroom bed, seeds included), every ore now has at least two buyers — and there is a boat! 🚤 No blueprint, eight wood logs, two iron plates and a cable; on an ocean start you get one for free. It needs water ahead, never burns fuel, and if you run it aground the server gently sets you back into the wet after three seconds.

Playing together gets easier: crews are named groups of up to eight players whose members are automatically allied — bases, beam, factories, stations, teleporters, everything just works. The owner invites (online players only, no join codes), anyone may leave. Add named map markers (up to eight per world, with icon, colour and a "shared" flag that allies and crew mates on the same body can see) and a ping on C: "look here!" pulses for 30 seconds on the map and the compass. 📍 Missions have grown: scan jobs on every board, mission chains with "Part 2 of 4", big orders, knowledge as a reward — and whoever beats the Guardian no longer finds an empty galaxy, but remnant machines, pirate havens with bounties, and a repeatable survey chain for the relay network on the station boards. 🛰️

The third big topic mattered to us because children play here: chat is now safe, even on a public world full of strangers. A server-side content filter (new world rule: Open / Filtered / Safe, family presets on Safe) also catches leetspeak, repeats and Cyrillic look-alikes, masks phone numbers and links — and always tells the sender why a line did not go through. Anyone who spams or trips the filter three times gets a ten-minute chat pause, announced. You can /mute a player for yourself (text and voice), /report now works without an account — so for browser guests on glitch.fun too — and admins can hand out a pause with /silence instead of only a kick. Base, station and companion names run through the same screen. And for everyone who wants to know what their kids are playing, there is a parents page with an honest self-assessment (PEGI 7 / USK 6 territory — explicitly not a certified rating). 🛡️

Finally the controller, because it is Justus's favourite input device: the Tab menu could not be reached with a pad at all — now every menu can, both editors, every text field (via an on-screen keyboard) and all 20 arcade games (the mouse games get a virtual cursor). D-pad up opens the chat, d-pad down turns the block, the triggers can mine and place if you want them to, and there is a dedicated controller page in the settings. 🎮 The research tab is finally called "Blueprints" and shows your knowledge with an "Enough knowledge" filter. And three bugs from your reports are gone: the ship switch that put you inside a wall, the settler who moved into your masonry, and the macOS start that could not send a single network message — thank you Lyxette, sasas and Bastian, you are in the credits now! Protocol stays 3, saves migrate; since there are seven new network messages, please update client and server together. Enjoy the bundle! 📦✨