During this year's Gamescom I had the chance to try out many different games. While many like Ninja Gaiden 4 and Phantom Blade Zero were a known quantity, there were a few other unexpected surprises, like One More Level's Valor Mortis and FLASK, a roguelike auto battler by Chop Chop Games to be published by Ghost Ship Games which felt every bit as good to play as it was to look at with its hand-draw style heavily reminiscent of the best comic books.
Already from its simple premise, FLASK shows incredible creativity with that little touch of wackiness that never goes amiss in certain types of games. Embarking on journey through a dangerous, dark medieval landscape, players take on the role of an alchemist heavily in debt who has to collect various flasks to power up an army of homunculus warriors to take on the goblin hordes and earn enough gold to pay off the debt. This journey is conducted via multiple hand-drawn maps featuring randomly generated nodes where players can access shops to purchase flasks, obtain flasks for free, interact with NPCs via which the main story is developed, and fight enemies using the current party of homunculi warriors. At the start of a run, only one homunculus will be available but as the adventure proceeds, players can add more homunculi to their party, up to a total of three, and even save different party configurations to deal with any unforeseen challenge.
Being able to handle any situation on the fly using what's available is the core of any roguelike experience, and from my short time with FLASK, it's evident how the game turns this up to eleven. The game is clearly aimed towards a hardcore roguelike audience, with very challenging auto battles upon which the player has no control, except for the flasks that the homonculi can equip for improved stats and special effects. These flask, which are exclusive to each homunculus type and activate in a set order during combat, have some widely different effects, some a little complicated to come to grasp with in a short amount of time, but the synergy opportunities they offered looked impressive, so much so that, at the end of my time with this early build of FLASK, I had to stop to check out what I had on hand and how I could set them up to win even the most challenging of fights. Better yet, these party setups can also be put to the test against those of other players via asynchronous PvP, which is sure to add another dimension to a game that is setting out to be an incredibly solid addition to the genre.
Loving roguelikes in the vein of FLASK where synergies between different powers are key, I would have spent hours testing out what the game had to offer in this sense, so I was more than a little disappointed when my Gamescom 2025 session ended, cutting my time with the game short. Hopefully, the game will deliver on the potential evident in this early build when it launches on Steam sometime next year.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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