Upland shows off early build of Uppies roaming player-owned properties

In Brief:

• Upland (official site) shared a look at Uppies wandering across properties owned by players, describing it as a “very early look at what the Devs are working on.”
• The feature extends Uppie property assignment, under which residents already patrol properties and water plants on their own.
• Nothing was said about a release date, and the studio has cautioned that preview material may change ahead of launch.

In a post on X, the studio said it is developing a way for players to see their Uppies moving about the properties in their portfolios.

“What if you could watch your Uppies move around your properties?” the post read. No build number or release date accompanied it.

What’s already shipping

Uppie property assignment is live. Once a player assigns an eligible Uppie to a property, that resident takes over plant petting duties, walking the property and watering the plants.

Eligibility starts at Level 3. Higher levels bring no added upside — Upland said a Level 8 Uppie will not provide better plant care than a Level 3 Uppie.

While an Uppie is on duty, it cannot be merged, sold or swapped. Should the property change hands through a sale or swap, the Uppie remains with whoever owned it originally.

Manual feeding hasn’t gone away. Troves are also off the table for Uppies, so players still have to cross the map for those themselves.

The assignment option lives under Manage on the property card, alongside Sell, Build and Arrange. To verify a placement, players can check the Uppies tab in the Asset Wallet or look for the Uppie indicator in the property card’s top right corner.

Plants in poor shape won’t bounce back instantly. According to Upland, wellness climbs slowly as plants get fed and looked after, and random damage can still occur.

The 3D property push

During Genesis Week 2026, Upland told its community that properties would be rendered in 3D on the map, complete with animated animals and Uppies on them. Players will also be able to enhance an Uppie so that their own resident appears on a property in place of a generic one, the company said.

Themed “Full Speed Ahead,” Genesis Week 2026 delivered nine announcements. Among them was an alpha release of Troves, which players can trade in for animal genomes, Uppies and Sparklet.

A rebrand landed in the same window. The studio now describes itself as a forever real-world city-builder game and refers to its player base as architects.

How Uppies got here

Introduced in 2025 as Upland’s digital residents, Uppies come in two flavors: ordinary citizens — families, professionals, shop owners and artists — and scarcer Iconic Uppies that carry bespoke designs and backstories. Befriending one costs UPX, with part of that payment routed to the owner of the property the Uppie called home.

November 2025 brought Resident Scores. Two new profile stats appeared, Total Uppies and Influence Score, broken out by city and neighborhood. Building service structures is the primary way to push Influence Score up.

Neighborhood Scores and their leaderboards were retired in the same move, replaced by the Upland Census, a dedicated site for residents data.

January 2026 added Uppiepedia, a live registry of every Uppie that records which ones have been discovered or collected and which have been merged away. The bulk of the original UORIGIN batch was viewable from day one, though the generation’s Iconic Parody Uppies were withheld for a later announcement.

Each Uppie has traits and a level running from 1 to 10; the more traits, the higher the level. Iconic Uppies occupy a star level beyond the top tier. Pairing two Uppies of matching level produces a higher-level resident, and seasonal burn events serve as markers in the evolution cycle.

Upland has additionally indicated that Uppies at Level 5 and above will be employable in service and office structures, leveling those buildings up.

Background

Dirk Lueth, Mani Honigstein and Idan Zuckerman founded Uplandme Inc. in 2018. The game’s property NFTs and UPX are registered on EOS.

A $2 million seed round arrived in 2019, backed by FinLab EOS VC Fund and angel investors. A $7 million Series A extension followed in October 2023, led by EOS Network Ventures with a $1.5 million check, joined by returning backers C3 Venture Capital and Animoca Brands. Proceeds went toward making Spark tradable on Ethereum as Sparklet, which converts to Spark at 1/1000.

This is familiar territory for the studio. Ahead of the Uppies map layer reveal, the team noted that the images it circulated weren’t final and were subject to change before release.

The newest post carried the same caveat, in eight words: “Very early look at what the Devs are working on.”