The art style for Apothecurse is what drew me directly to the demo station for the game at the CODE area at PAX AUS 2025. This New Zealand game featured hand-drawn 2D art, and the eldritch, cartoon-style design of the characters looked intriguing.

The pitch for Apothecurse is that you’re playing as an amateur alchemist, Leon, who at the start of the game accidentally sets an inn on fire, and then starts a wild adventure discovering some creatures in the city and abroad. To fight them all, he must put his alchemy skills to the test and learn to get better even faster. The demo sees you explore this starting section of the game with Leon setting up in the inn, learning to create potions, and ending the demo with a fight against a monster.

The potion crafting is a simple mix of some time-based mini-games, but it’s choosing what ingredients to combine that’ll become more important as the game continues. Different ingredients create health potions, while others, poison and freeze ones. When you accidentally set a fire, you’ll need a freeze potion to put it out, and you’ll also need to not be throwing health potions at the monster at the backend of the demo, like I was at first.

There was a simple enviourmental puzzle in the demo, but it seems they’ll also be a big part of the game, with everything always coming back to the potions and allowing players to craft them in their own way, and solve both fights against monsters and the puzzles in the game with their own sort of creativity as several potiions could overcome the solution in the game.

For a game with such a cute art style, the story and themes here are certainly dark enough to intrigue those looking for an eldritch mystery to keep on their radar.

[Explosion Network attended PAX Australia 2025 with a provided Media Pass.]