Kiln - Four Opinions From The Fire
Thanks to Xbox, all four of Player2’s editors were provided with access to Double Fine’s latest. Collectively, dozens of hours have been spent firing pottery in kilns and dousing the flames of a range of others, and with that experience behind them, our editors are here to share their thoughts.
Jess Zammit
Despite loving most of the things Double Fine puts forward, I was skeptical about Kiln from the get-go. Multiplayer games are absolutely not my thing, and when I learned the game didn’t enable couch co-op, it was unfortunately pretty clear that my time with it would be limited. I love the pottery aspect – being able to literally shape your fighter as you please, therefore dictating where its strengths will lie, is an extremely fun mechanic. As someone who spends hours in character creation, I almost started to think that this part of the game might sustain me. Cool clay-making, mixed with the pointedly Double Fine vibes of this whole thing, made the opening part of the game a joy.
Alas, the multiplayer aspect of the game – arguably the core mechanic – lost me just as I suspected it might. The loop is extremely repetitive – get water, take it to the opponent’s kiln, get murdered, respawn and repeat. Things might be a little different if you were playing with friends and could develop some kind of strategy as a team, but as a person going it solo in a team of strangers, it was all decidedly all over the place. If I was given a game that allowed me to just make different pots over and over again, with a different mechanic linked to how I was able to unlock new decorations and shapes, I could spend hours in this game. But as it stands, it’s not likely I’m going to seek to spend any more time with it – at least not without friends to make the whole experience feel like it has a little more purpose.
Stephen del Prado
I’m pretty far out of the loop these days when it comes to some developers, so the Double Fine logo when firing up Kiln had me excited, given I had no clue what the game was going in. After a handful of hours, I have a good idea of what Kiln is and isn’t – it isn’t one that will stick around for me personally, but as a parent of a pre-teen it will live on my PS5 a while longer. “Rocket ships” aside, the creative aspect is one that I appreciated, even if Paul and I couldn’t manage to wrangle two other consistent play partners to take the most advantage of the underlying systems. Make no mistake, there is depth here if one wants to find it, each map benefitting from particular pottery shapes and powers compounded by a team of four, working in unison. This was evident in matches against teams that were clearly in chat with their game plan glazed and fired, dousing my team’s kiln before we could even approach answering in kind.
A lack of chat and the relatively family friendly mechanics mean not only am I not overly fussed at my pre-teen playing Kiln, but his younger brother can spectate without major concerns. That’s perhaps the biggest dichotomy of Kiln, that the audience it serves best may not get to see the best of it, or even enjoy the sweet taste of victory if they keep getting sharked by high skill players. Like a lot of games, Kiln will serve its purpose and gently fade from existence as both my sons and the userbase at large outgrows it, especially if it can’t keep pace with content – but name an online-only title that doesn’t ring true for.
Matt Hewson
I guess I am at a bit of an impasse with Kiln. I want to love it, and in fact, there are many things it does that I truly adore. There is the undoubted “Double Fine-ness” that permeates through the game that is impossible not to love. It has a wonderful pick-up-and-play nature that means anyone from age 8 up should be able to have a blast, and the creativity inherent to the Kiln itself is a blast. But it commits one big cardinal sin that I think will kill this game quicker than anything else, and that is a lack of split-screen.
Had this title included split-screen, I could see it having a long and healthy future as a party game along the lines of Human Fall Flat and Gang Beasts. The sort of game that my son pulls out when he has a group of mates over, and they need a laugh without thinking too much. But as it is, the online-only play means that all of a sudden, Kiln is walking into live service territory, and frankly, in this day and age, that is almost a death sentence. That is a massive shame, because it really feels like this is a game made with passion and care, but it just can’t compete for people’s online time.
Paul James
I jumped into Kiln not feeling super optimistic about the game’s longevity. There honestly isn’t that much to do in Kiln, and it’s why, after about 6 hours of play, I’m pretty happy to tap out and not return. That said, I did have a lot of fun in the time that I spent playing the game. I had a blast in the game’s singular game mode – Quench is a fun 4v4 PvP mode that I found myself on the winning side of in almost every match across my final few hours with the game, largely with the help of the OP small bowl.
While I enjoyed what I played, and also extracted some enjoyment out of the pottery wheel, while simultaneously scooping up as many PlayStation trophies as I could, there’s just too little here to sustain my interest. Quench is fun, but there’s not enough to do outside of it to entice me to return for more. There’s not enough meat on the bone for this to be a game worth returning to over multiple nights, let alone over weeks and months like most live service games demand of their players these days.
The idea is nice, but way too thin to be a title on its own unfortunately.
Kiln was played on Xbox/PC and PS5 with codes kindly provided by Xbox Australia.
