Kiln is a blast, no matter how many people play it

Double Fine Productions and Xbox Game Studios released Kiln on April 23, and the oddball multiplayer game is a riot. It’s unlike any other multiplayer game I’ve played this year and actively encourages me to create within it. Kiln delivers all the charm and originality you’d expect from a Double Fine game, but molds it into a casual multiplayer vessel rather than a single-player one.

I share my praise for Kiln because its public-facing player count data on SteamDB doesn’t paint as positive a picture. It hit a concurrent player count of 193 on Steam at launch and now hovers in the 80s. That’s underwhelming, but it also served as a reminder to me that the concurrent player count of a multiplayer game on a single platform doesn’t tell the full story of a game’s popularity or quality, especially when that game is a more casual, console-friendly experience.

The gist of Kiln is that players can mold their own pottery vessels and then fight with what they make. Its clay-molding system is shockingly intricate, and I feel like I could make anything I created in-game on a real-life pottery wheel with enough time and effort. My only complaint is that some tools and vessel sizes were locked off at first, so I had to level up quite a bit before I could make exactly what I wanted to.

Depending on a vessel’s shape and size, its health-bar size, water capacity, and special abilities change. That’s important in Quench, Kiln’s primary competitive mode. To win a Quench match, players must soak up water scattered across several arenas and then put out the fire in the opposing team’s Kiln. The first to do this three times wins. In my experience, matches quickly became mosh pits as players instantly fought over the limited supply of water in certain levels and rushed to spray the opposing team’s kiln.

There’s definitely strategy to be found in properly timing special abilities and splitting up how offensively or defensively your team should play, but Kiln generally feels like a casual, low-stakes multiplayer game. If you’re like me and get exhausted by the intensity and difficulty of a game like Marathon, Kiln’s gameplay loop will be much more your speed.

The laid-back nature of Kiln is also why it’s unfair to compare it to more forcefully engaging multiplayer games on SteamDB. Kiln is sculpted for the casual console gamer and Xbox Game Pass subscribers rather than Steam’s more hardcore audience. While Microsoft has not shared any player statistics for Kiln itself, I would not be surprised if the game is faring better on PS5 and Xbox Series X. Even when playing through Xbox’s launcher on PC, I never struggled to find a match.

Kiln stands as proof of how player count statistics are given too much weight in the discussion of multiplayer video games. While online games need healthy communities to survive, popularity on Steam does not directly equate to game quality or longevity, especially if it’s a multiplatform title. What matters most is if you and your friends can have a great time playing Kiln.

I’ll always prioritize quality and originality over everything else when choosing a new multiplayer game to engage with. Right now, Kiln is my current fascination, as it delivers on those qualities.