Every now and again, a game like Kiln comes around and blows people away with a creative idea built around a simple mechanic. When I first saw it during the January 2026 Xbox Developer Direct, I was immediately sold on the premise—make pots and then have those pots do battle. It’s so simple, yet so charming that
But as I’ve said before, an interesting idea does not a good game make, and Kiln squanders almost all the potential it could have had on an early release that needed way more time in the oven. It’s a lacklustre multiplayer game built around a creation gimmick that could have been fun, had it actually been accessible.
Something I’ve said before about the game industry is how the wrong lessons are consistently learned from a game’s shaky launch and subsequent success. It began with No Man’s Sky, which I’ve said numerous times was lightning in a bottle that no other studio was going to replicate, and yet numerous others have released broken, empty sandbox... Read more