Kiln Review (Xbox Series X|S)

How do you define a "good" or "successful" game? That's what I've been thinking about while playing the new Xbox first-party title Kiln over the past few days, as although I've had lots of fun with it, I also worry about how many people it'll appeal to in the long-term. But does that matter? Can we not just enjoy this for what it is? The answer is "yes", but with the lingering concern that Kiln is an online-only game and therefore has a limited lifespan.

The concept behind Kiln is simple — you're thrown into 4v4 matches in a game mode called "Quench" where you each need to defend a kiln from being doused with water by your opponents. Water is usually collected in the middle of the map, and it's up to you to decide whether to play aggressively and focus on attacking the other team's kiln, stay back and protect yours, or combine strategies throughout the course of a 5-10 minute match.

Quench is a fun and well-designed mode that allows for tactical play, especially once you've unlocked all three sizes of pot (small, medium and large) that you can pick from as you're eliminated. For example, you could start a match as a small pot and use your speed to out-manoeuvre your opponents and douse their kiln, and then switch back to a large pot and use your added health and strength to defend your kiln with extra force. The maps are great and varied too, although there are only five of them, with a sixth to be included very soon.

I love the "Roll" mechanic where you can use momentum to jump over obstacles by rolling your pot along the ground and gaining speed, and while combat does feel a bit like button-mashing at times, you also get a special ability that differs depending on what style of pot you've created, and if you know how to wield it well, it can alter the course of a match significantly.

The whole system of creating your own pot is really well-designed too, and you find more options to customise these as you level up, so there's definitely an incentive to keep playing — at least during the first few hours. In fact, this is one of my favourite create-a-character features in any game, allowing you to get hands-on and mould/decorate your pot in multiple ways, and it's an example of Double Fine's creativity at their very best. I also really appreciate how much attention they've put into Kiln's presentation, as everything from the soundtrack to the in-game cutscenes give off a really polished and appealing vibe - it's almost Disney-like in many ways.

Despite all of these positives though, I can't ignore the elephant(s) in the room — Kiln is an online-only game with just one game mode. Yes, the character creation suite is amazing, the presentation is great, the gameplay is fun... but if you're only offering one way to play, there's only so long it can hold most people's attention. That wouldn't be such an issue if there was local multiplayer or some kind of solo campaign, but if the playerbase falls away and it suddenly becomes hard to find a match, there's nothing else to do here.

On the flip side, you could argue that by only having one mode, Kiln isn't segregating its audience too much — they're all being funneled into one place, which might actually work in its favour in terms of matchmaking. Personally though, while I can take the game at face value and say "this is a lot of fun", I'm also kidding myself if I think I'll be playing it regularly throughout 2026 unless they keep adding new content. The foundations are good, they've created something impressive here, but I still question its long-term staying power.