Getting started
You describe a game. An agent builds it. You play it, and when it does what you meant, you publish it here and get a link you can send anyone.
1. What you need first
Kiln Studio does not include an AI. It drives one you already have on your machine — Claude Code, Codex or Copilot CLI. Install one of those and sign into it before anything else, because Studio has nothing to say without it.
This is on purpose. Your AI, your account, your bill — nothing you make here is metered by me, and no prompt you write passes through this site.
You do not need Godot, and you do not need to know what Godot is. You do not need to have written code before.
2. Install
Take the build for your platform from the download page, or on a Mac use Homebrew. Every released version also keeps a permanent address on the releases page, so going back to an older one is always possible.
Your computer will complain the first time. The builds are not yet code-signed, so Windows shows a SmartScreen warning and macOS says the app cannot be checked for malicious software.
On Windows: More info → Run anyway. On macOS: open it from System Settings → Privacy & Security, where a button appears offering to open it anyway.
Signing costs money per year and is on the list. Until then, that warning is what an unsigned build from a one-person project looks like — not a verdict on the file.
3. Make something
Say what you want in plain language. Not a specification — a sentence. “A top-down game where you are a beekeeper defending hives from wasps” is enough to start, and the useful part is what you say next, after you have played what came back.
Work in small steps. “Make the wasps faster”, “the hive should flash when it is hit”, “add a score in the corner”. Play after each one. That loop — change it, play it, say what is wrong — is the whole method, and it is a great deal more effective than describing the finished game in one long paragraph up front.
Everything lives on your machine while you do this. Nothing is uploaded, and nothing is public, until you decide it is.
4. Ask for a publishing invite
Uploading is invite-only while the site finds its feet. Apply, say what you are working on, and you will hear back. It is a capacity limit rather than a bar to clear — the answer is usually yes.
An approval grants two things:
- Publishes
- A count, spent on every upload — preview builds included, because that is the one choke point where bytes arrive. They do not renew. When you run out, you ask for more.
- Storage
- A ceiling across all your games at once. A Godot web export is tens of megabytes, so it goes further than it sounds.
5. Publish
From Studio, publishing signs you into this site — a browser window opens, you sign in as you normally would, and you approve the app once. Studio then exports the game for the web, asks you for a title, uploads it, and opens the game's page here.
Everything else is decided on this site, not in Studio. The description, the thumbnail, what it plays on, the credits — those are things you write after looking at the thing, so they live on the game's manage page.
A first upload lands in preview. It is playable by you, and by anyone you send the private link to, and it is on no listing and in no search index. When you are happy, you publish it — and at that moment its address freezes for good, because from then on other people have it.
Credits
If anything in your game came with a licence that asks to be credited — music, a font, an asset pack — the credits box on the manage page is where that goes. An agent will happily pull in assets on your behalf, and you are the one publishing them. The content policy has the details.
6. Update it
Publish again from Studio and the new build lands beside the live one rather than on top of it. People keep playing the old one until you have tried the new one and made it live. A broken export can never take down a game people are playing.
Every game holds at most two builds: the one that is live, and the one waiting.
When something goes wrong
- The game will not load in a browser. Play it from the manage page first — that is the same build players get. If it works in Studio and not here, the export is the difference, and I want to know: hello@kiln-games.com.
- An upload stopped halfway. Transfers stay resumable for two hours, so retrying costs a retry rather than a publish.
- You are out of publishes. Ask for more.
- Anything else. hello@kiln-games.com. It is one person, so it may take a day, but it is a real person.