The premise of What Goes Up is the setup for a physics comedy: you work for GALACTIC REFUSE CO., a high-risk interplanetary waste disposal company. Your job is to collect the accumulated garbage of the universe — hotdog carts, rusted bathtubs, solar panels, camping cars — and stack it into a tower tall enough for the retrieval ship to collect. The Grab Gun and Hover Pack are your tools. Structural integrity is your problem.
Bossa Games revealed the title at the Gamescom 2026 Xbox Showcase on August 27. The studio behind Surgeon Simulator, I Am Bread, and I Am Fish — a consistent track record in exactly this genre of physics-based absurdist comedy — is applying that expertise to a 4-player co-op building game that team17 will publish across all three platforms.
The Building System
The core mechanic is tower construction from whatever junk the alien planet has accumulated from Earth’s discarded output. Every object is a potential building block; the physics engine determines whether it’s a good one.
This creates the specific design tension that What Goes Up is built around: you can approach tower construction as a deliberate engineering problem — placing each object so it stably supports the next, working out the structural logic of hotdog carts bearing the weight of solar panels — or you can approach it as an act of desperate improvisation, throwing objects upward and hoping the mass holds together long enough to reach the retrieval ship.
Both approaches are valid. The first produces methodical satisfaction when the calculated structure holds; the second produces the “aesthetic of collapse” — the specific Bossa Games comedy of physics doing something catastrophic when provoked. The 4-player co-op environment makes the second approach more likely: when four people each have opinions about where the camping car should go, the collaborative decision-making process tends toward chaos.
The Bossa Games Lineage
Bossa Games’ catalog is a consistent statement about a specific genre: games where the physics engine is the comedian and the player is the setup. Surgeon Simulator‘s floppy hand controls made surgery catastrophically difficult; the surgery was the comedy target. I Am Bread made navigation catastrophically difficult; the bread’s persistence was the comedy. I Am Fish applied the same logic underwater.
What Goes Up is Bossa applying this sensibility to collaborative building rather than individual navigation. The addition of co-op introduces the specifically social dimension of Bossa’s comedy: in single-player, the physics defeats you. In multiplayer, the physics defeats you, and your friends are somehow responsible.
Studio Head Anthony Kyne described the origin: a game jam idea about creating a playground where friends could build, experiment, and cause mayhem together. This is the correct origin for this kind of game — the concept that the developer themselves wanted to play, built into something shareable.
The Environmental Obstacles
Lava rivers, electrified hazard zones, malfunctioning jump pads — the alien planet’s environmental features don’t make tower construction easier. These are the external conditions that the building puzzle is set against: not just “can you stack this junk” but “can you stack this junk while avoiding the lava river and the jump pad that keeps launching your camping car sideways.”
The cosmetic discovery system — outfits hidden within the garbage piles — provides an additional exploration motivation within the level that rewards thoroughness alongside the primary tower construction objective. Finding a spectacular costume while excavating hotdog carts for building materials is the kind of incidental discovery that co-op games use to generate side conversations and distraction from the main plan.
The Team17 Partnership
Team17’s General Manager Harley Homewood’s stated enthusiasm — “we’re delighted to be partnering with Bossa Games, who are well known for creative co-op games, to bring this fun and chaotic puzzle game to Xbox Game Pass” — is the publisher’s endorsement of a developer whose track record in exactly this genre the press coverage has noted. Team17’s catalog spans numerous indie titles across different genres; What Goes Up is a natural fit for a publisher that specifically supports games with distinctive creative identities.
Who This Is For
Strong fit for: Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread fans who want Bossa’s physics comedy extended to co-op building; friend groups who want a co-op game where collaborative planning leads to spectacular physics disasters; Dumpster Gang players from this month’s coverage who want another absurdist co-op game with similar energy; Xbox Game Pass subscribers looking for a Day 1 co-op option; players whose preferred game sessions are “let’s see what happens when we do this.”
Cautious fit for: players who specifically want precise, methodical construction games over chaotic emergent physics; anyone who needs confirmed release dates before following; players who want solo-focused design rather than the 4-player co-op emphasis.
Less ideal for: players who dislike physics-based mechanics; anyone wanting competitive rather than cooperative multiplayer; players seeking narrative content alongside the sandbox.
The Takeaway
What Goes Up is Bossa Games applying their decade-plus expertise in physics-based absurdist comedy to a co-op tower-building game about galactic garbage disposal. The hot dog cart is a building material. The bathtub is a building material. The camping car is a building material, right up until someone puts it in the wrong place and the entire structure collapses into the lava river.
Team17 is publishing. Xbox Game Pass Day 1. 2026 on all three platforms, specific date TBA. The retrieval ship is waiting at altitude. The garbage is everywhere. And the structural engineering required to reach it is everyone’s collective problem.
Information regarding ‘What Goes Up’
| item | detail |
|---|---|
| Developer | Bossa Games (London, UK) |
| Publisher | team17 |
| Genre | Cooperative physics-based puzzles, building and sandbox |
| platform | Xbox Series X |
| Release date | Scheduled for release in 2026 (exact date undisclosed) |
| personnel | 1-4 player co-op |
| etc | Xbox Game Pass support |
| Steam Page | Shortcut |
