Everyone, look how open-minded I am: I’m spotlighting a demo for a game I’m not personally interested in. Nobel Peace Prizes, FIFA Peace Prizes, Pepsi sponsorships, surely all mine now that I’ve pointed out Flask – a darkly comedic deckbuilding autobattler, with scratchy hand-drawn art by Danish pencil warlock John Kenn Mortensen – has a playable preview on Steam.

Flask casts you as a financially insolvent alchemist, clawing your way out of the red by gathering and upgrading a monster crew to slay fantasy beasts for their valuable blood. Decks are formed of flasks that your recruited homunculi will quaff, in your desired order, to grant them various effects during their automatic battles; setting these potions in certain sequences will add elemental bonuses, challenging you to come up with the most potent drink menus from each ‘munc’s flask supply.

There’s also a roguelike-style structure to your blood hunts, which means Flask is a combination of at least three different genres I almost never get on with. This presents an issue, as there’s plenty else about it that intrigues. The multiplayer component, for example, takes the form of asynchronous alchemist-on-alchemist fights. Each player’s homunculi team can appear as a boss encounTer to someone else, complete with their most recent flask loadout. Besting a fellow mixologist – amusingly, without their knowledge – will help you climb a game-wide blood earnings leaderboard, a reminder that we’re ultimately all just selling something to someone. Even if that something is goblin ochre.

The artwork I’ve seen, both recently and back in a hands-off demo at Gamescom last year, also manages an impressive degree of grossness. All twisted proportions, itchy textures, matted fur and hollow eyes, it is, and there’s an intentionally stiff quality to the animations that helps to reinforce the papercraft look.

Flask doesn’t have a release date yet, but if you’ve a higher tolerance for building decks than I, the demo’s up for grabs. It’s in the works at Danish developers Chop Chop Games, with help from the publishing arm of Deep Rock Galactic makers Ghost Ship.