Sony announces Kiln, a multiplayer brawler where you fight as pottery

Sony Interactive Entertainment has revealed Kiln, a new multiplayer title for the PlayStation 5 that combines pottery simulation with team-based combat, set for release in 2026. As detailed on the PlayStation Blog, the game tasks players with sculpting their own characters on a virtual wheel before sending them into arenas to shatter opponents.

Most fighting games ask you to memorize frame data or complex inputs. Kiln asks you to worry about structural integrity and glazing techniques. It is a premise that sits somewhere between Ghost and Fight Club, filling a niche in the market that nobody realized was empty until right now.

The Art of War

The core loop of Kiln is split into two distinct phases: creation and destruction. Players begin by sculpting a vessel on a pottery wheel. According to the announcement, the game features a "best-in-class pottery wheel simulation experience," which is a bold claim for a genre that typically involves punching things. Once the clay is shaped, players can attach appendages (arms and legs) and decorate their fighter with various glazes and stickers.

These artistic choices are functional rather than purely cosmetic. The physical dimensions of the sculpted character directly impact its performance in battle. A wide, stout pot will likely be stable and difficult to knock over, while a tall, thin vase might offer reach at the cost of balance. It introduces a layer of physics-based strategy where the character build screen is literally a lump of clay.

"A game that we like to refer to as a ‘pottery power-fantasy,’" the PlayStation Blog post reads. "It celebrates both Creativity and Destruction: the pleasure that comes from both making beautiful things…and then smashing those beautiful things to smithereens!"

Physics and Fragility

Once the firing process is complete, the ceramic avatars enter team-based online arenas. The gameplay appears to lean heavily into the "floppy physics" sub-genre popularized by indie hits like Gang Beasts or Human: Fall Flat. In those titles, the struggle to control an unwieldy character is half the challenge. Kiln adds the variable of custom hitboxes and weight distribution based on how terrible you are at pottery.

The PlayStation 5 hardware is doing some heavy lifting here regarding physics calculations. While the graphics are stylized and whimsical, calculating real-time destruction and balance for user-generated meshes requires significant CPU overhead. The PS5's Zen 2 processor is likely being put to work ensuring that when a teapot gets clotheslined, it shatters correctly.

A Return to the Weird

For long-time PlayStation enthusiasts, Kiln feels like a spiritual successor to the experimental era of the PlayStation 1 and 2. In the late 90s and early 2000s, Sony frequently published titles that defied standard categorization. Games like Vib-Ribbon, Mister Mosquito, and Incredible Crisis were built on bizarre high-concepts that prioritized novelty over mass-market appeal.

In recent generations, the industry has largely shifted toward massive, cinematic blockbusters, leaving the weirdness mostly to the indie scene. Kiln represents a rare instance of a major platform holder backing a project that is fundamentally absurd. It is a reminder of a time when a game about a rapping dog or a rolling ball of trash could sit on a shelf next to Final Fantasy.