Kiln Review

I’m a Double Fine fiend. They’re up there as one of my favorite developers, from games like Grim Fandango to Psychonauts to (a very personal and nostalgic favorite) Costume Quest. They have a very unique and distinctive style that sets them apart in the industry; it’s hard to name anyone who really comes close.

I’ll play just about anything they release, even if it’s a genre I don’t particularly like. Which brings us perfectly to Kiln.

Firing up the competition

I don’t like multiplayer games. I need to clarify that before we go into this review. I spent a lot of time playing games like Fortnite or Call of Duty during my school years, and I would get extremely mad. So mad it has burnt me on that entire style of game. I don’t mind games like Sea of Thieves, but give me a competitive multiplayer and my controller will be in the wall within 5 minutes.

Now that’s cleared up. I spent my money on a multiplayer game. Kiln, the brand new title from Double Fine, is an online pottery MOBA-like. You play as one of your curated pots, which you need to use to put out your enemies' kiln and win the game. It’s a fairly simple concept and has a decent amount of depth to it. As someone who isn’t a huge fan of these types of games, it really stuck with me.

The core gameplay is really simple. You have an attack button, a roll button to get across the map faster, a spray button to shoot out any water you currently have collected, and a special ability specific to your pot type. Collect water across the map and transport it to the enemy kiln and hope you can spray it all in before your opponents smash you to pieces.

As I say, it’s simple. That’s where the depth comes into it. There are 24 unique pot types in the game, each of which has its own ability. This could be a medium-sized bottle which has a spear ability to launch into enemies in front of it, or a large bowl that can summon a cloud of toxic gas that slowly poisons enemies. These pots have unique stats too, with some favoring water capacity or some with more health. Finding your preferred build and play style is paramount for surviving.

Maps are tightly designed and tiny. It pushed you right into the action; you’ll likely be in combat within the first 10 seconds on any of the maps. It makes every match feel like you’re not wasting your time. They’re each unique with their own systems or designs that help them flow differently. Whether it’s a war table where the two kilns are at the same end, separated by a wall you need to go around, a mosh pit basement where the floor drops into the perfect mosh area and traps you and unsuspecting enemies in, or a party dance floor where, if you’re found on the chosen squares, you’re stuck dancing.

It helps that fighting feels good, even with the minimal amount of options. Destroying an enemy feels great to see them explode into tiny ceramic pieces, the sound effects of the clashing pots is satisfying to hear. Using your ability at the right time to take out multiple pots or helping your team by freezing the enemy team with your special makes you feel great. It does a fantastic job with that.

There's a respawn system where you fire out of the kiln into your spawn area, it’s a unique system and feels like pottery helldivers. A minor issue I have with this is that you can smash enemies with it, a pretty cool thing. However, you only deal a small amount of damage in a small surface area. It makes it challenging to pull off, and you’ll rarely ever be able to. This might be a me thing of thinking kills should be easier to do, but I wish these attacks weren’t so slow and hard to correctly execute.

Glaze it till you make it

My favorite part of this game is by far its pottery systems. Kiln includes a full pottery design system to let you create your pots the way you want to. Molding the pot into your preferred shape shows you which pot class your design will fall under, letting you play around and find the right ability. You can add handles, spouts, lids, and stickers. My favorite, though, is the glaze, which you can tilt and rotate your pot and paint it in specific ways to ensure it’s truly your design.

Double Fine did an incredible job with the customization here, the more you play and level up, the more you’ll unlock new cosmetic pieces to use. No micro transactions, no shady systems. Just keep playing, and you can make more cool designs. Genuinely, you could release this as its own game, and I’d probably buy it. I think it is by far the standout system of this game.

You can even find community pots. Seen a design you really like? Well, you can add it to your collection and play it in-game. The sheer number of options this game gives you to look the part is staggering, and it should be applauded in an era where a cosmetic pack would set you back £20 on a good day.

It helps that this all falls under Double Fine’s unique style. All of the animation work and options you’re given feel like something you’d find in a standard release from them. Just because it’s a smaller multiplayer release doesn’t mean this shouldn’t feel like part of their library.

It’s Kiln or be Kilned

Kiln isn’t without its problems. My biggest issue is that it already feels a bit sparse for content. While I could probably get 10+ hours worth of enjoyment from its pot crafting mechanics, the actual gameplay (You know, the reason for buying the game) is much weaker. At launch, there’s only one game mode and 5 maps. I didn’t think this would be an issue until my 30th match, where I’m thinking “God, I wish there was more”.

You seem to very quickly see everything this game has to offer. You’ll unlock all of the pot crafting tools within your first few hours of gameplay, and you’ll have seen every map and understand what makes them all different. They’re great, don’t get me wrong. But I simply can’t see myself staying on board when my attention is already starting to fade.

It doesn’t help that the game is starting to die down a bit already. Multiplayer is a really hard genre to break into, and it’s dog-eat-dog out there. A few days after launch, it’s taking me a few minutes to get loaded into matches with bots in. It’s not something that gives you a lot of faith in the future.

There’s a roadmap for the rest of 2026, but my issue is that all of the features that would better keep players engaged seem to be in Summer or Winter. We’ve got missions coming or “new ways to play” but I wish we had stuff like that now instead of needing to wait. In the next month, we’ll be getting stickers and decorations and one new map, which is nice, but I don’t think that’ll fix the larger issues. I’ll happily come back in the future if they add more reasons for me to play, but right now, I fear there won’t be a game to come back to.

There are other issues I have with how progression works. You get XP to level up, but XP is only earned in two ways: finishing a match and winning a match. If you finish a match, you’ll receive 1,500 xp; if you win a match, you’ll get a bonus 500xp. Making winning a nice bonus if you do, but not something worth wasting your effort on. If you want to level up and earn new cosmetics, you might as well jump in and go AFK for the entire match. You don’t get bonuses for smashed pots; you get nothing for helping put out the kiln. It just feels basic.

Throw Pots, Not Hands

Kiln shows a lot of promise. It has a fun core loop that you can get a lot of enjoyment out of and a fantastic customization system that I’d bet anyone can enjoy. It has the potential to be a truly great multiplayer contender if they go the distance. With some more content updates and reasons to jump back in, I’ll surely find the time to get my pottery back on.

I love Double Fine, and I really enjoyed Kiln despite its issues. Would I recommend it? Time will tell.