Kiln: Double Fine's Pottery Party Brawler Revealed at Xbox Developer Direct

Character Customization is almost always a must in gaming, and Kiln is taking that approach to a whole new level. Double Fine’s latest creation, a team-based multiplayer party brawler, puts players in charge of creating an entire world of fighters.

Players start off the game with the ability to create their fighters from scratch, with your choices of size, shape, and design directly influencing how your character plays in the game. Luckily, players won’t need to dedicate years of practice to making the perfect pot. Project Lead Derek Brand put it simply: “It's just a button and a control stick, and you can make any kind of shape you wanted. We wanted people to immediately feel like they’re masters at this craft.”

For small, medium, or large sizes, each with their own advantages and disadvantages, within each weight class are eight shapes that a player can craft to help give themselves the biggest advantage on the battlefield. Each shape comes with their own special, basic, and air attack, with 24 total special attacks in the game. Inspired by the functionality of each shape.

Water is perhaps the most important resource to consider when making your pot fighter. Water capacity and health are inverse of each other. The more water you can hold (the key to multiplayer), the less health you have. Once you lock in your design and shape, the game offers a variety of glazes, handles, patterns, and stickers to make sure each player's creation is unique to them.

After a player locks in their design, it's off to The Wedge with a plethora of choices from a dojo to practice your moves in combat, a display case for other players' creations, where you can hop in and ‘burrow’ for battle. As well as an in-game store with even more choices of stickers and trinkets to decorate your pots.

Once you hop into the battle portion of the Kiln, the versatility of your pots really shines. In the Quench game mode, two teams of four compete to pour water on the opposing teams' giant kiln. Remember when we said water carrying capacity was important? This is why. Carry water, douse the kiln, and protect your base all the three main aspects of Quench and being able to adapt and change pots on the fly is key to success.

For now, Brand says the goal is to focus on map variation on launch, with a commitment to Quench mode and the lobby experience first. “We’re going to be shipping with several maps, they all have a unique gameplay hook to them, and they’re very different from each other.”

Kiln launches Spring 2026 on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, Xbox Cloud Gaming, PlayStation 5, Steam, and with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Make sure to join our Discord TheGamerzTheory to find the best teammates for launch.