If you remember my article awhile back about the Xbox Developer Conference, one upcoming game was Kiln. This was the game where it is a big battle of come to life pottery. I have been spending some time playing it since it came out on Game Pass. It is now time to get into it.
When I saw this back at the Developer Conference, I noticed that this is a new idea. Could this actually be good? While I was excited, I wasn’t quite sure I would keep coming back to it to play. I thought it would get boring fast. Surprisingly, this has been quite fun.
The game is real simple. You start out as a little spirit in the online home area. You can steer it around and explore as long as you want. Everyone that is playing
the game will be seen there hanging out. Eventually, you are going to need to make your pottery. The pottery is what your spirit will go into in order to control your pottery. You’ll see a station with a bunch of pottery wheels. Go to anyone not taken to get started. You’ll then be directed to a menu where you
will select your clay size and then begin. You’ll hands appear next to the pottery wheel as you control them to make your pottery how you want it. This is in large part what makes the game suprisingly fun. There is nothing provided. You make it all.
Once you have it how it you want it to look, you’ll be directed to another menu where you can further customize the look of it. You’ll be able to add a handle, lid, and so on. You can even drop it in a different color glaze. Your spirit is also customizable. That includes body color, body shaper, eyes, and brows.
Quench Mode
The core of the game is just one mode and that is Quench. This is a 4v4 objective battle where each team has to defend their Kiln by not letting the fire get put
out by the opposite team. It amazes me how little features are in this game and yet it can be so fun. For the combat, you have one simple strike move and your special ability that charges up. That is it. The battles are quite action packed.
You can swap out your pottery shelf throughout each match and not be stuck with what you chose in the waiting lobby. In this case, don’t do what I did and just make one or two pottery characters and rush into battle. If I could start over again, I would make at least five to have a balance.
During combat, you can drop and roll. It helps a lot to get away when you are about to die or just trying to get around your opponents. Throughout each map are water stations. Just break them open and the water will go into the bowl part of your pottery. That is how you attempt to put out kiln fire of the opposite team. If you can, I find it effective to drop and roll towards the enemy kiln after getting water and rolling back to a water station for more water. I had a match where not only did my team win, I was the leading scorer on my team.
Here are my final take aways for Kiln:
There you have it with my take on Kiln. Such little simple features that have equaled to a lot of fun. You’ll like how the game also automatically gives you your special ability depending on the size and structure of your pottery when making it at the wheel. Though I do wish I had the option of manually setting my ability if I wanted to. I think there is more potential here with the Quench Mode. Bigger battles, and matches such as free-for-all and team death match would add to the excitement, even those game types would have nothing to do the a Kiln. I hope we’ll see these updates at some point. You can download it right now on Game Pass or buy it on Steam, Xbox, and PS5 for $20.
Don’t forget that PAX West 2025 is nearly here. I’m looking forward to telling you about my experience there again. If you’re planning to go, refer to my previous articles from last year to help you out on where to park and all that.
Coming soon, I’m going to have a section called Guides. I’m going to take all the notes from everything I have reviewed and post them there. So you can look at them for quick references that has helped me, which will hopefully help you. So if you click on Starfield, you’ll see an image of my character in one of the rovers with a caption saying how remaining in the rover will provide protection during combat. Everything will be updated as I discover more. Be sure to be on the look out for that.
In the next article, the anticipated gameplay of GTA 6 will finally be here! I will go over my thoughts on what I saw. Log into Netflix this Thursday!
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