The clever thing about Flask is that it’s a game about weird magical potions, and it also looks like the hallucinations you’d have if you drank one.
Just announced for a 2026 release, the game brings together elements of roguelikes and autobattlers with a brilliantly weird, gross visual style created by artist John Kenn Mortensen. Set in a world where alchemists battle to drain goblins of their magical blood, it feels one part ’80s fantasy, one part doodles out of the back of a troubled teenager’s schoolbook, and one part something you’d see airbrushed onto the side of a van. I love it.
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I’d be sold on looks alone, but having gotten to play a section of Flask at Gamescom last month, I’m convinced there’s a really solid roguelike here too.
As you travel across a simple overworld map, you gather flasks for your homunculus warriors. These basically allow you to create a production line of actions in battle—one might be a simple attack, another a strength buff, and another a berserker strike that sacrifices health for damage. When you fight a goblin, each of you will run through all your flasks in order, and then if you’re still alive, the process will continue to loop until goopy green blood splatters the scene.
It’s almost like programming your soldiers with simple line code, and even in my brief 30 minutes with the game, I quickly found myself discovering interesting synergies and agonising over the exact order of my flasks. This one adds a chunk of armour to my homunculus, so it should go before this attack which deals extra damage based on my armour value… but the enemy will get to strike between those two, potentially removing that armour, so is there a better solution?
What if instead I shifted to a build based around using that armour to defend myself to keep me in the fight as long as possible, looping through a chain that steadily buffs my damage? By turn five I’ll be unstoppable… but will I survive that long? And this was with only one homunculus to worry about—in the final game it’ll be possible to field up to three, further expanding the possibilities.
So far it seems like a really accessible take on the autobattler genre, bringing in a bit more of the feel of a singleplayer roguelike than something like The Bazaar, but still retaining asynchronous multiplayer elements. At the end of each section, you’re pitted against another player’s homunculi build from a past run, forcing you to stay competitive—but also offering inspiration for strategies you could try next.
My short run ended in disaster. My slow and steady build hit a goblin type that thrived much more than I did on having multiple turns to grow in power, and my homunculus was left broken in the wasteland. But all the delicious goblin blood I’d earned could be taken back with me and used to pay off the mortgage on my tower, earning new permanent upgrades—like a sort of grimdark version of being in debt to Tom Nook. I left my appointment wishing I could try another run straight away, already full of ideas of what I’d do differently next time. Not die, for one.
As someone who’s bounced off autobattlers like the aforementioned The Bazaar as well as Teamfight Tactics, overwhelmed by their ever-evolving metas and competitive seasons, Flask seems perfectly in my wheelhouse. All the fun of tinkering and theorycrafting you get in the genre, but in a format more reminiscent of Slay the Spire than a demanding live service game.
Which does make that vague “2026” release date as painful as getting jabbed with a rusty goblin sword, but at least Flask has a Steam page now for me to gaze longingly at. If you’re keen to start mixing some potions too, give it a wishlist and stay tuned to PC Gamer—I’ll certainly be the first to let you know when it gets a demo.
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