In Xalingópolis you work for the city council, erecting the best buildings for the city, using wooden building blocks from a traditional Brazilian children's toy, "O Pequeno Engenheiro" (The Little Engineer).
Each round the active player rolls a die and moves his pawn forward on a path around the city's ground plan. Your pawn position will dictate your action: receiving building blocks, receiving design cards, exchanging pieces. But not all actions are good and, if you're unlucky, you could lose a project or even lose your previously collected blocks.
Each project card shows a construction using specific blocks, and an amount of victory points corresponding to the difficulty of the construction. If a player has the card and the necessary blocks, instead of rolling the die, they can build on the city's ground plan.
Once there are 12 buildings in the city, the game is over and whoever has the most points wins.