Yeah, it's because of the Layout by Layout loading now.
I'm still not sure the new version is better, until we can find a way to show the user the game is loading between layouts, otherwise having a 5-10 second pause when going to a new layout is bad.
That's interesting, in my game (a pretty complex one), I create all objects from events, so I have one layout which holds all the assets.
This asset storage layout (200+ sprites) will get loaded in the beginning (I guess), still I get much faster loading times and no delay when I switch layouts later.