Double Fine reveals Kiln a pottery brawler coming soon

Double Fine's secret project is a pottery brawler where you craft clay bodies and then beat the hell out of each other.

What Double Fine surprised everyone with

• Kiln was the mystery fourth game at Xbox Developer Direct 2026, and nobody saw this coming from the studio that made Keeper
• Spring 2026 is when this drops on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PS5
• It's a multiplayer party-brawler that splits itself between making ceramic art and smashing your friends to pieces

How do you actually build your fighter

• You start as this tiny ghost thing that needs to sculpt a solid form out of clay at a pottery wheel
• Derek Brand, who's running the project at Double Fine, wanted to make sure anyone could jump in and feel like a pottery expert right away
• The controls are dead simple, just a button and a stick, but you can shape whatever wild design pops into your head
• Your pot's shape directly determines what abilities you get in combat, which is where the strategy kicks in

The combat side of things

• Everyone gets a basic attack no matter what, but your pot's dimensions unlock different special moves
• There are 24 total special attacks tied to how you sculpt your body
• Flat plates shaped like hockey pucks can ricochet trick shots across multiple targets
• Cup-shaped builds fire popcorn in an area-of-effect blast
• Big cylinder pots transform into massive hammers that can crush opponents
• Quench is the intro mode they showed off for the brawling side

Making your pot look cool

• You can slap on different glazes, finishes, and custom designs beyond just the base shape
• The Wedge is a shop where you grab more decorations and patterns for your creations
• There's a whole lobby area where you can test stuff out, mess around with other players' pots, and prep for matches

The world they built for this

• Celadon is the deity overseeing everything, and she represents both creation and destruction at once
• You're a bodiless sprite floating around in her domain
• Ancient Greek and Egyptian gods used to rule here, but they're gone, leaving behind floating islands that became battle maps
• Each map pulls from these old gods' personalities and domains
• Hermes has a shipping facility map with conveyor belts and packages flying everywhere that you need to dodge
• Dionysus runs a Boogie Lounge with a dance floor in the middle, and if you step on certain tiles, you're forced to dance while other players keep fighting

When you can try it

• A beta's coming before launch, and Double Fine will share timing details soon
• Day one on Xbox Game Pass when it releases, and you can stream it through Xbox Cloud Gaming right away