Molding a game into shape is a lot like bringing a piece of pottery to life from a chunk of clay. You must be nimble enough to maintain its shape all the way through to the firing process to keep your vision intact, which requires a tremendous amount of patience where a misstep can have it all fall apart—but with enough persistence, creativity, and elbow grease, beautiful art can come out of the fire. Now, Kiln has arrived to complement my metaphor with its unique blend of pottery creation and multiplayer party brawling, wrapped in Double Fine's singular magic. Revealed during the latest Developer_Direct, where we got to meet the team behind this upcoming game, you play as a little spirit tasked with creating and inhabiting pots of all sizes and shapes, before jumping into team-based multiplayer battle arenas against your fellow players' own clay creations.

Creating your own pot isn't just a pleasant side activity—you're quite literally handcrafting your pot from scratch, with your choices directly influencing how your character plays in the game. In talking with Project Lead Derek Brand, it's these custom pottery creations that help bring the unique elements of Kiln to life. The team worked incredibly hard to balance the feeling of doing it yourself with an accessibility that allows you to jump into the game feeling as though you've made the right pot for the right job."Making pots in real life is really difficult," explains Brand. "It takes a lot of practice, and you can get good at it over time, but it is not an easy thing to just jump into. We wanted to make the pot-making super easy and accessible—it's just a button and a control stick - and you can make any kind of shape you wanted. We wanted people to immediately feel like they're masters at this craft."