Double Fine's New Game Kiln Lets You Shape Your Own Characters Out of Virtual Clay

Double Fine released a new game called Kiln this week on PlayStation 5, Xbox, and PC. It's a team-based game where four players fight another team of four. What makes it unusual is that you make your own character by sculpting virtual pottery — and the shape of the pot you create actually changes how your character plays in the match.

How the Game Works

In Kiln, teams compete by throwing water at each other's fire. You control spirits that live inside pottery pots, and different pot shapes work like different character types. Some pots might hold more water but break easily. Others might be tougher but hold less water.

Before each match, you can bring three custom-made pots. When your character dies, you respawn in a few seconds and can switch to a different pot if you want.

Making Your Own Pots

The heart of the game is a virtual pottery wheel. You use real pottery techniques — centering the clay, pulling out the walls, shaping the form — and the actual shape you create matters for gameplay. A tall, skinny pot holds more water. A short, wide pot is harder to destroy.

Teams can work together to design pots that fill different roles — some good at attack, others at defense, and some at support. This gives players a lot of freedom in how they want to play.

The Environments and Matches

Each match takes place in an environment with moving objects like spinning boats and conveyor belts that affect how you move and position yourself. Matches are short and fast-paced. When you die, you're back in the action in seconds, which keeps the game moving.

Right now there's one main game mode — it's just about the water-versus-fire mechanic. There aren't other rule variations yet.

Why Microsoft's Game Studio Is Making Multiplayer Games Now

Double Fine is owned by Microsoft. Over the last few years, Double Fine made single-player story games like Psychonauts 2. Now they're making a multiplayer game instead. This is a shift in what the studio does.

The broader context here is worth noting. When Microsoft buys a game studio, it often nudges them toward multiplayer games. Multiplayer games keep players coming back month after month, which is valuable for Microsoft's Game Pass subscription service. Single-player games get finished and put down. I've watched this pattern play out many times across the gaming industry over the past thirty years.

It's also notable that Kiln is coming to PlayStation and PC at the same time as Xbox. Microsoft owns Double Fine, so they could make this exclusive to Xbox. They're not. This tells us that Microsoft cares more about reaching lots of players — on any platform — than about forcing people to buy Xbox hardware. We've seen this with Minecraft too.

The Technical Side

The pottery wheel creates some tricky technical problems to solve. Shaping clay in real-time while dozens of players are playing together means the computer has to constantly recalculate what the pot looks like and how physics work on it. The game also has to make sure that no one sculpts a pot that's too unfair or broken.

Because matches are quick and players respawn fast, the game's servers are built for speed rather than trying to track a giant persistent world. This keeps the experience smooth across different platforms.

Where Kiln Fits in the Market

Kiln enters a market where games like Overwatch 2 and Valorant are already very popular. The pottery customization idea is genuinely different, which could help it stand out. Whether it appeals to casual players who like being creative, versus hardcore competitive players, is still an open question.

Double Fine has built a reputation for making beautiful, artistic games that people enjoy. Many players already know the studio from Psychonauts and Grim Fandango. That goodwill could help Kiln succeed. But it's not guaranteed — competitive multiplayer games are a new direction for the studio, and it's unclear whether the people who loved Double Fine's story games will want to play a team-based water-throwing game instead.

The fact that it launched on all three platforms at once is smart. Multiplayer games need lots of players to survive, and releasing everywhere gives Kiln the best chance of building a big enough community. What happens next depends on whether Double Fine keeps updating the game, whether the community sticks around, and whether the pottery customization stays fun as players figure out winning strategies.