Trust studio Double Fine to conjure such a quirky idea for an online brawler. Originating from one of the team’s fortnight-long diversions, where they follow their zaniest ideas, Kiln is a chaotic multiplayer party game that’s as much about creation as it is destruction. Here, the things you craft become the very vessels you charge into battle. Equal parts physics battler and pottery wheel simulator, Kiln is poised to bring something genuinely unique. Here’s fifteen things to know before you buy.
Game Overview
Kiln is an upcoming party brawler for teams of four-versus-four, where you’ll face off against each other in fast-paced, physics-based matches which lean into the same chaotic energy as Party Animals, TowerFall Ascension, or Super Smash Bros – all with a pottery twist. The overarching objective is simple: carry water through battle to extinguish the other team’s flaming kiln, all while protecting your own. However, there is a surprising amount of depth to achieving that goal, where victory hinges on reflex, creativity, and co-ordination as much as aggression.
You Build What You Fight With
Yes, you lovingly sculpt your own ceramics before each battle, then they become the vessel from which you unleash chaos. This idea is one of Kiln’s most distinctive, and it’s a clever diversion from typical character selection screens, where your personality bakes directly into your avatar’s class. Further, there’s a strange satisfaction in seeing something handmade be thrown into combat, knowing whether it survives (or more likely shatters) is part of the core experience.
Pottery Design Impacts Gameplay
What’s more, your ceramic creations directly impact gameplay, with your finished pot shape and size determining how it handles, its durability, water carrying capacity, and more. Even special combat manoeuvres will vary between bowls, jugs, bottles, and the like – more on this later. The sculpting phase is a fully-realised crafting process too, where designing your pottery is as much about strategy as it is creation, with near-infinite combinations to concoct something truly unique.
Size Defines Your Role
In Kiln, the most effective teams will bring a mix of shapes and sizes to battle. See, smaller plates and pots tend to be faster and more agile, making them ideal for hit-and-run tactics, sneaking, or chipping away at larger, more cumbersome pots. Large vases and the like aren’t scuppered by their slower speeds though, as they’re significantly more durable, allowing them to absorb damage and brute-force their way through opposition territory.
You Can Save Your Favourite Designs
Whilst the pottery wheel does provide catharsis through creation, there’ll be times when you’ll want to streamline the process. Well, Kiln has you covered – you can save up to three custom pot designs that can be quickly selected before matches. This will save you from having to recreate your most successful designs each time, but given the wealth of builds available during the sculpting phase your desire to create something new will always be encouraged.
Physics-Based Action Drives the Battle Experience
Combat in Kiln is heavily driven by physics, where battles present an almost slapstick quality in their tumbling unpredictability. Pots can roll, collide, and smash across acutely designed arenas, meaning precision likely isn’t as integral to surviving encounters as embracing the mayhem. In other words, learning how to work with the physics rather than against them is how you’ll gain the edge, all whilst having the most fun.
Water Management is Key
And how will you extinguish the opposing team’s flaming kiln if not for water. See, in Kiln, water may be your ammunition, but it’s also a resource you have to manage. As already alluded, your pot’s design denotes your carrying capacity, but you’ll need to collect it from puddles dotted throughout the battleground first. Then, you could race to the opposing kiln, but you’ll risk spilling it along the way, bumping into barriers or environmental hazards. No, a mix of patience and frenzy might be the key approach, as paradoxical as it sounds.
You Can Switch Pots After Death
Rather than locking you into a single, match-long strategy, Kiln gives you the option to switch pot designs after being eliminated. What this means is that you can switch your pot shape, size, and overall design to meet the needs of your team and adapt to how the battle is unfolding. However, matches might be a little too chaotic to get a full read of what’s going on, so it’ll be interesting to see how the developers provide you with ample-enough information to evaluate your team’s progress.
Pots Can Be Healed During Battle
In the heat of battle, it’s highly likely your vessel will be chipped or even broken. This wear, however, isn’t just for comedic impact, nor to reinforce the fragility of your creation, but to introduce a recovery system whose inspiration comes from a philosophical source. The Japanese art of Kingsugi uses lacquer mixed with gold to repair broken pottery, where cracks become proud reminders of the pot’s history. So here, instead of resetting damage, Kiln borrows from this thoughtful practice to bring beauty into an otherwise necessary mechanical process.
Special Attacks Are Tied to Pot Type
We mentioned it earlier, beyond basic movement and combat abilities, special attacks can vary depending on your pot design, with the development team pushing some outlandish capabilities that are perfect for the game’s most over-the-top moments. Cups can blast popping popcorn like multi-directional shrapnel, bottles can transform into projectile swords, plates hurl pies, re-orientating jugs morph into megaphones which use soundblasts to push opponents away. The list goes on, demonstrating that pot design isn’t just about survivability but what slapstick powers you can bring to the fray.
The Pottery Wheel is Fully Realised
We mentioned this earlier, too, but the pottery crafting system in Kiln goes far beyond a simple pre-match gimmick. You’ll have access to a fully-realised pottery wheel, complete with a range of tools, techniques, and decorative options. What’s most striking about this process though is in how approachable the dev team have made it. You don’t need to be a seasoned ceramicist, or indeed an experienced gamer, to get to grips with the pottery sim’s arcade-like delivery and easy-to-follow layout. No matter your artistic skill, anyone should be able to chase the most optimal builds, or to simply enjoy the creative process.
There is a Learning Curve
If there’s one lingering concern, it’s that early previewers have highlighted the game’s potential for a steep learning curve. Of course, this will vary between individuals – and might not be a problem at all – but it’s worth highlighting as everything else we’ve covered so far has pointed to Kiln being an intuitive, fun-first experience. One point of friction is in the clay-firing process, where the suggestion is that manually baking your pot in the kiln – saving it, in other words – isn’t as clear as it should be. This suggests the user experience could use a tweak, but that is easily fixable by the dev team. The core physics-based structure might take some getting used to as well, but that’s all part of the fun.
The Wedge is a Place to Show Off Creations
Outside of matches, Kiln features a dedicated social space known as The Wedge. This lobby allows you to show off your pottery designs with other players. Furthermore, you can also practice your pottery skills, decorate vessels, and generally hang out. There’s a shop here too, where you can spend chips earned in matches on extra stickers, glazes, and decorations.
Release Date, Platforms, and Price
Kiln will release on April 23rd to PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam. Pricewise, you’re looking at $19.99 for the base game and $29.99 for the Fired-Up Edition which includes extra cosmetics to decorate your creations. Also, the game is included on Game Pass day one.
PC Requirements
Minimum PC requirements, as per Kiln’s Steam page, list an Intel Core i5-9400 or AMD Ryzen 5 1600 CPU, GeForce GTX 1650 or AMD Radeon RX 570 GPU, and 16GB RAM. Recommended hardware, however, includes Intel Core Ultra 5 225 or AMD Ryzen 7 5700X CPU, GeForce RTX 4060 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT GPU, and 32GB RAM. Storage space required is 8GB.
