The Xumi Post #1: Year 1 of Xumia & The Road Ahead

Hi there, fellow builders. João from the development team speaking! Today marks the first day of our biweekly blog posts to keep you up to date with the past, present, and future of BuildPort Xumia.

TL;DR

• We're starting our biweekly blog!
• More updates just released to make progression simpler
• Ongoing sale
• 2026 roadmap

The Blog

What to Expect

Every two weeks, someone from the development team will have updates to share, including insight into specific features, in-progress work, old, new, and shiny stuff, the development process, community focus, and much more!

This week, we'll give a simple overview of what BuildPort Xumia is, the team behind the game, the progression patch that went live on August 13, and some news regarding the future of the game.

What Is BuildPort Xumia?

BuildPort Xumia is a first-person VR game tailor-made for people who love to build awesome contraptions, called gizmos, and use them everywhere! The little green guys you see everywhere are the Xumis, the remainder of a species that was blessed by the Elders (creators of the brick!). The adventure starts when they call upon you, the Builder, to help them out in Xumia. It is your goal to build gizmos and defend the Xumis in Core Siege, have fun in the PvP mode Duels, test out your gizmos in The Rift, and discover what your purpose is!

From a development perspective, we started with spaceships as the only gizmo type and, throughout the first year, expanded the game with defense gizmos and hand weapons! We are always evolving the game with you, the community, and we can't wait to show you what is coming up. Across future blog posts, we'll dive into details such as the lobby system, UI updates, Core Siege co-op, the Social Hub, and many of the game's core systems.

Meet the Team

You might've heard of BuildPort Xumia before, but you likely aren't aware of those behind the scenes. We are a multicultural team from all corners of the world: Canada, the US, Colombia, Portugal, Latvia, Australia, and many more countries. However, the core team is actually quite small! Here's a small part of our core team and a description of what BuildPort Xumia means to them.

Katya (Producer / Marketing / Community) - "To me, BuildPort Xumia means being part of a genuinely kind and creative team and building a community that I really care about. I love seeing players have fun, share their ideas, and create things we never expected. Watching the game and its community grow has made the whole experience feel very special to me."

Pedro (Gameplay Lead / Technical Director) - "To achieve our vision for Xumia, we had to solve a lot of hard problems. It was a hard and exhilarating journey! And at the end, it is extremely rewarding to see that Xumia provides our players with the power of creation so that they can also embark on their own journeys of discovery and creativity."

Kerry (Sr. Engineer / Software Developer) - "One of the best parts of BuildPort Xumia is getting to see what the community creates using the various tools and features. It never ceases to amaze me what creativity our players have, taking what we have built and creating something we never even thought of. That just inspires me and the team even more to come up with new features to see how BuildPort Xumia evolves."

Alireza (UX / Software Developer) - "It has been an exercise in building for creativity, giving players just enough freedom without letting the whole thing fall apart. Most definitely the project that taught me the most about what it actually takes to make a game."

Stevie (Gameplay Developer) - "It's the opportunity to connect with the creativity I had as a kid. To freely build with my own hands, take it apart, and make it better. BuildPort Xumia allows me to enjoy designing, experimenting, and turning an idea in my head into something I can experience."

Ryan (QA) - "The game takes me back to being a kid, building Lego spaceships big enough for my action figures to fit inside, and brings that same childhood joy rushing back."

David T. (Game Designer) - "I grew up loving creative toys like Lego Mindstorms that let me bring my creations to life, but actually stepping directly into the gizmos in Xumia unlocks another level of immersion, and there are still endless possibilities that I want to explore!"

João (Game Designer) - "BuildPort Xumia means growth to me. I came into it right after it had been released, and I had a head full of ideas. It's been amazing to be able to have seen some of those go from ideation, design, iteration, implementation, and into the live environment. I have also grown as a developer and designer alongside the game, and I've had so much of what I thought I knew challenged, reinforced, and improved upon. Not only that, but I have the privilege to do it alongside an awesome team of supportive, fun, and amazing people who make the process even better! For anyone who reads this and wants to get into game development as a profession, if you truly love it and put in the work, there's no telling where it may take you... just be sure to enjoy the journey and those within it - and most importantly, never stop learning!"

José (Developer) - "Xumia has been a great place to learn, build things, break things, and then spend slightly longer than I'd like figuring out why they broke. More than anything, it's working with a team that genuinely loves games and cares about what we're making. That passion is hard not to pick up, and getting to keep learning while doing work I actually enjoy has made the whole experience pretty rewarding."

Camilo (Back End Developer) - "It's the combination of creativity and work of very talented people. You can feel the passion poured into it every day at work, and you can see the results in the game itself. It means being able to learn new things every day while helping the team bring ideas to life and keeping the passion project going."

Edgars (Art) - "Xumia is a forever-evolving universe. It's changed so much over time that we've been trying to shape it into something cool, fun, and unique, and surely it will still be a surprise to see what it becomes in the future. I think it's up to the players now to let their creativity run wild, make Xumia their own, and meanwhile we'll keep working on giving them more experiences and things to play with."

David P. (Developer) - "BuildPort Xumia means growth for me. And because this awesome game made me grow so much, seeing it evolve and bring even cooler features every time brings me so much joy, and I hope lots of people get to explore, build, and battle in all of its game modes!"

If you want to know what it means to Wilson (Creative / Art Director), check out our first Inside Xumia Dev Interview:

Progression Update

The Original Goal

Our goal with the new progression is to allow modular challenges to be easily added. These challenges both teach you how to play - as you progressively unlock more complex parts - and give you some of our new paint cosmetics.

We Might've Gone Too Far

However, we hear you loud and clear. It was too much. For existing players, the loss felt too vast and the gain too little, even if the first tiers of objectives are quite fast to unlock. For new players, including those using Try Before You Buy, building was restrictive to a point where the core pillar of the game - building - could not be easily accessed from the get-go.

How We're Making It Right :)

To address the situation, we've made one big change, which includes:

• Making 17 parts available from the beginning, with no objectives required in addition to the previous base parts pack. This will allow for a lot more building, with no friction whatsoever.
• Removing Tier 1 paths 3 to 5 and updating Tier 1 path 2.
  • Since Tier 1 was always meant to be the introductory tier, we decided to remove many objectives that we found somewhat redundant within the wider system. In addition, we redid the requirements for the objectives in Tier 1 path 2 to be more concise, combining multiple older objectives into a single one and changing others' requirements.
• Changing the rewards for all paths where the parts are now unlocked immediately.
  • Rewards for five objectives have been changed and now award brand-new paints added with this update!
• This update is live now, and it also includes a host of bug fixes and performance improvements.

Sale

If you've always thought of picking up BuildPort Xumia but haven't jumped in yet, now couldn't be a better time to start! Especially with our ongoing sale, live from August 14 to 24. With the updates to progression, you can now enjoy a lot more building right from the get-go - have fun!

Roadmap

Since you always want to know what's coming down the line, we're ready to share a roadmap for the rest of 2026. While we are keeping some things close to our chest, it's safe to say there will be a lot more to come!

The September Build

In the next blog post, we'll have a lot more to share about what's coming in September and beyond! Safe to say, social builders will be quite happy... and we may have left a big announcement for the next blog post.

See you around, Builder!

• The BuildPort Xumia Team