Make a fork of blinklib and hack out all of the shared values stuff. Hack out the code that runs around loop() to build the fiction of a “frozen” world inside of loop().
Now you can write your own normal, async driven code directly the way you want - react to an incoming packet with an outgoing packet immediately. And you will also not be lugging around all that extra code that is using up space and fighting against you.
I always meant to publish a library exactly like this, I just have not had time and there has not been much motivation since the current crop of games seem to fit well into the blinklib worldview (or maybe we are currently selecting for those types of games and suppressing others?). Additionally, I imagined that this library would mesh with a real compiler rather than the ugly Arduino IDE stuff. I actually think it could be a great fit for a golang SDK, although significantly more work since you’d have to rewrite some of the blinklib stuff.
Let me know if you want to pursue this! I’ll do as much as I can to support your efforts!