First Impressions & Time Played
To start off, I feel like I gave Kiln a fair shake, with just over six hours played.
Right from the moment you launch the game, it’s clear you’re stepping into something special visually. Kiln is a masterclass in art design. The use of color is striking, and the soundtrack is genuinely catchy. It feels fresh in a way that’s rare in recent releases.
However, once you get past that initial impression, the cracks start to show.
Core Gameplay Loop
The game introduces you to what feels like a basic tutorial for its core mechanics, but quickly you realize this is the gameplay loop. Matches are 4v4, where you collect water scattered across the map and carry it to the enemy’s Kiln to deal damage, eventually extinguishing it to win. Along the way, you’re dodging and attacking the opposing team across various maps, creating an offensive and defensive back and forth. At times, it feels like an extremely light MOBA. The combat is relatively simple, with a basic attack, a jump attack, and a special ability.
Character Creation & Customization
Where Kiln truly shines is its character creator.
You can design Bowls, Kettles, Vases, Plates, Jugs, or Vessels, with the game assigning your creations into categories automatically. You sculpt your character on a pottery wheel using abstract floating hands, gradually unlocking new tools and clay sizes, small, medium, and large, as you progress. Each size affects combat and abilities. Smaller pieces move faster, hold less water, and deal less damage, while larger pieces are slower, tankier, and hit significantly harder. Medium pieces land right in the middle, which adds a layer of strategy.
After shaping your piece, you customize it further with toppers, spouts, handles, charms, and glazes. These are purely cosmetic, but they’re fun to unlock through progression and the in-game store. Once finished, you fire your creation in the Kiln and add it to your starting lineup of three characters, which you can swap between during matches.
Mid-Match Creation & Hub World
Technically, you can also create new pieces mid match, but in my experience, doing so felt like a waste of time and put my team at a disadvantage.
Then the game drops you into a small hub world where you can interact with other players, access the cosmetic shop, and continue creating more pottery pieces.
Content & Replay Value Concerns
When it comes down to it, I can understand trying to justify the limited gameplay loop, along with the lack of modes and maps at launch, with its $30 price point. But personally, I think Double Fine and Xbox Game Studios missed a huge opportunity here.
A Missed Opportunity
The decision to make Kiln a 4v4 multiplayer party game feels like the biggest misstep. The entire time I was playing, I couldn’t help but imagine how much better this concept could have worked as a Kirby style experience, a creative 3D platformer where you shape pottery on the fly to solve puzzles across diverse environments.
Double Fine clearly has the talent to build beautiful, imaginative worlds. This could have been a truly unique, potentially genre defining platformer for Xbox. Instead, I was left feeling bored with its limited maps and basic combat, and at times dreading pushing forward just to see if the game had more to offer.
Final Score 6.5/10
