Halloween is the perfect time to try out a spooky game. You could explore yet another abandoned house, run from a chainsaw-wielding maniac, or spend hours searching for ammo in the dark.

Or you can try Phobies—an unusual turn-based strategy game where your worst fears take physical form and go to battle other people’s fears on the battlefield. And yes, a little background information: I spent over a year playing this game and reached the top rank of Sum of All Fears, so I have a lot to tell you about.

Do you remember what you were afraid of as a child?

Phobies is home to toothy monsters, hideous creatures, living nightmares, and creatures I wouldn’t even trust to take out the trash. I think Phobies fits the holiday theme perfectly without being a horror game. The game challenges you to think through every move, capture control points, build a monster collection, and destroy your opponents in lengthy battles.

It sounds like a rather strange cocktail of a collectible card game, chess, and a cartoon accidentally shown to a child at three in the morning. And that’s not all: battles can take place in real time or asynchronously, where you make a move, go about your business, and your opponent responds at their own convenience. Seriously, I’ve had games that lasted weeks.

What are Phobies?

Phobies is a free-to-play turn-based tactical strategy game with creature collection from Smoking Gun Interactive. The game was released on March 7, 2022, and is available on PC via Steam, as well as mobile devices. Cross-platform play is supported. In May 2026, the developers added Russian language support to the game’s settings.

Although I strongly recommend you play in English. The problem is that there are a lot of untranslatable puns, which are completely lost when you enable translation. The game has a very small community, but very high ratings. Only 1,531 reviews, but 85% of them are positive. And the game won a crazy number of awards in 2022.

Here, fears materialize as independent creatures, each with its own appearance, characteristics, and combat abilities. The collection already boasts hundreds of characters, and their range is constantly expanding. However, don’t expect a typical survival horror game: you won’t have to hide from an unkillable stalker, solve puzzles in a dark basement, or experience yet another tragedy involving teenagers spending a weekend in the woods.

Phobies is primarily a strategy game, with horror elements working through the atmosphere, creature design, and overall tone. Instead of forcing you to fear monsters, it challenges you to assemble your own army of monsters and send them into enemy territory. You can download the game without purchasing it, and then decide for yourself how deeply you want to dive into the collection and competitive modes.

And yes, if you enjoy fast-paced mobile games, vibrant colors, and action even when it shouldn’t, Phobies probably won’t be your thing. But if you, like me, love mobile entertainment but can’t find anything that doesn’t make your eyes water, you might just discover a hidden gem today.

Phobies gameplay

Phobies revolves around turn-based battles on maps divided into hexagonal squares. Each player has their own Heart, the destruction of which can end the match. To fight your opponent, you use collected creatures, summoned directly onto the battlefield.

It’s easy to draw a chess analogy here, but it’s incomplete. In chess, you work with a fixed set of pieces, while in Phobies, you choose your army from your collection. Some creatures are strong in close combat, others attack from a distance, others hinder enemy movement, heal allies, or have special effects.

A single army doesn’t guarantee a single result: much depends on the map, available resources, the positioning of your units, and how well you understand the capabilities of your opponent’s creatures. When moving around the field, you have to be mindful of obstacles, attack ranges, and dangerous areas. Flying creatures can overcome certain obstacles that would stop regular units. Some attacks require line of sight, while others allow you to hit targets at a distance or engage multiple creatures simultaneously.

Roughly speaking, there are attacks that strike in a straight line, and there are those that strike in a parabolic arc. And the latter can hit targets hiding behind walls. Leaving a shooter uncovered, forcing a slow fighter into a dead end, or allowing an opponent to gain a favorable position is a surefire way to turn a promising match into a graveyard of your own ambitions.

Each creature has two action points available per turn. They can be spent on movement, attacking, or using a special ability, though special abilities are typically limited to one use per turn. For example, you could move a unit to an adjacent square and attack an enemy, or take a position from which the enemy can’t safely respond. Sometimes, the right decision is to forego the attack altogether and retreat to save a valuable unit for the next turn.

Let’s say your powerful monster is already standing next to the enemy. The urge to immediately deal damage is overwhelming. But if the enemy can then destroy your unit, it might be wiser to first remove it from the danger zone and delegate the attack to another creature. You need to constantly weigh the potential benefit against the risk. The game rewards not aggression per se, but the ability to anticipate the consequences of your actions. And I haven’t even begun to tell you about the landscape.

There’s another important limitation: the same creature can’t be summoned again during a match. If your favorite unit dies, you can’t bring it back to the field with a regular resummon. Therefore, each unit in your army is an expendable resource, and wasting valuable creatures pointlessly is extremely frustrating.

To summon creatures, you need Keys—an in-game combat resource. Their number limits your options: you can’t simply deploy your most powerful creature on the first turn if you don’t have enough Keys. Initially, you have to find advantageous positions and deploy available units, and as you accumulate resources, opportunities to summon more expensive creatures open up.

By the way, all phobias are divided into categories:

• Undead – Heal when damaged, but cannot receive healing from other sources.
• Mechs are tough fighters with high damage output who take additional damage from electricity.
• Otherworldly – receive increased damage from poisons and curses, but after death they attack their killer, pulling them one cell away
• Monsters are just dense chunks of HP.

However, destroying the enemy army isn’t the only path to victory. Cards contain Panic Points, which can be captured by your creatures. If you control more of these points than your opponent by the end of your turn, their Heart takes additional damage for each point of advantage. Under standard conditions, this amounts to 200 damage for each additional point at the end of the corresponding turn. If the number of captured points is tied, no advantage is gained.

You can try to gather an army for a direct assault, break through to the enemy’s Heart, and create a personal nightmare for them. Or you can carefully capture control points, forcing them to defend themselves. Finally, there’s no stopping you from combining both approaches if the situation allows. The best part is, these strategies influence your opponent’s behavior. If you’ve captured several points and continue to deal passive damage, the enemy is forced to be more proactive. They can’t sit on the defensive forever, waiting for the right moment.

And here a real tactical conflict arises: send a soldier to capture a point or leave him near his allies for support? Try to destroy a dangerous target immediately or retreat to maintain the advantage? On paper, it all seems simple. In practice, even a small map can force you to spend a long time examining the positions before deciding on the next move. I hope I’m explaining this clearly and without being too stuffy. But in short, yes, this is a slow and fairly complex strategy, the basics of which even a child can master.

Now I’ll give you a rundown on the landscape. In Phobies, you can’t simply choose the most powerful creatures and hope their stats do the work for you; the map dictates the battle. Obstacles restrict movement and attack paths, dangerous areas can deal damage, and special tiles can help some creatures and harm others. Some tiles regenerate health, so controlling them can also influence the outcome of the battle.

Imagine you have a powerful melee unit. In the open, they can be a huge threat, but tight lanes and awkward enemy positioning can prevent them from taking full advantage of their strengths. Or you have a ranged unit that deals decent damage. They can be a major source of pressure, but only with careful positioning and the right targets.

Oh, and did I mention there are holes in the floor on the maps? You can’t go there directly, but if a creature accidentally ends up in one… well, it’ll die. A horrible death. And it’s so good that the developers added creatures that can influence unit positions! It’s another playstyle, with plenty of combo chains and moments like this:

Add to this a variety of special abilities, statuses, and movement types, and you get a game where you have to explore not only your own collection but also your opponent’s entire toolkit. Another great feature of Phobies is its two competitive modes. Asynchronous mode allows you to play without having to be in the game with your opponent at the same time. You make a move and send it, and your opponent responds later. You can maintain multiple matches simultaneously, returning to them at your convenience.

An asynchronous match can drag on for a long time if your opponent responds slowly. If you were expecting a quick game with a set start and finish, you’ll have to take your opponent’s schedule into account. This means you could be playing around 20-30 games at once. Brain-wracking? Perhaps, but where else would you find that?

Arena Mode is different. Players fight in real time, with limited time for turns, and once that time expires, actions are automatically executed. Here, you not only need to make smart decisions, but also do them quickly.

Visuals, dark humor, and monster development

Phobies’s main visual feature is its blend of horror with a deliberately cartoonish presentation. The game doesn’t strive for photorealism, gory violence, or terrifying close-ups. Instead, it transforms nightmares into stylized characters with recognizable silhouettes, expressive features, and a unique charm.

A creature can look grotesque enough to evoke a smile, yet possess an ability that makes it a serious combat threat. The visual style isn’t limited to the usual roster of zombies, skeletons, and demons. Rather, Phobies creates its own bestiary, inspired by anxieties and fears, with each monster designed to be not only visually appealing but also recognizable in combat.

And for me personally, that’s a huge plus. The game may look creepy, but it doesn’t treat its world with excessive solemnity. It has room for absurd situations, strange imagery, and dark humor. However, the main emphasis is not on the plot and comedic dialogue, but on the creature design and the very idea of ​​turning fears into collectible fighters.

We could talk for hours about the level of detail and attention to detail, but it’s better to see once than hear a hundred times. There are cool chest-opening animations, a musical theme (which, by the way, changes for Halloween and New Year’s). And some really small jokes. For example, the friends list is called Frenemies, and the world ranking is called Mount of Ego.

Cons of Phobies

Now I’ll come down to earth a bit and remind you why we don’t like mobile games. Phobies uses a free-to-play model with in-game resources, creature sets, and a progression system. You can earn rewards by playing matches, unlock new sets, and gradually expand your collection. However, the path to the right fighters can be long. You can’t always get the exact creature you need for your chosen strategy.

Instead of simply setting a goal and gradually moving toward it, you have to wait for suitable rewards, gather resources, and hope for a lucky break. This is a common pattern for a collection game, but in Phobies, it affects not only the diversity of your collection but also your combat capabilities. The developers themselves emphasize the importance of new creatures and their leveling, meaning that developing your collection is a significant part of the overall gameplay cycle.

The community’s most serious complaint concerns monetization. Negative reviews from players include limited daily progress, random pack contents, and the advantage of more powerful creatures. The mere presence of donations doesn’t mean winning is impossible without money. Tactical decisions remain crucial, and mastering the map’s unique features can compensate for certain weaknesses in a team’s composition.

But when you’re up against a more advanced army, your chances begin to depend on more than just the quality of your decisions. Sometimes, choosing the right target and positioning yourself can’t overcome the difference in stats. This is a painful moment for strategy: ideally, a defeat should force you to consider what you could have done differently. And when your opponent has a significant advantage in development, the question arises: did you lose tactically or simply haven’t unlocked sufficiently powerful creatures yet?

And here’s my personal pet peeve and, I think, the game’s biggest drawback, which forced me to shelve it for a long, long time. Briefly, all units are divided into categories:

• Normal
• Unusual
• Rare
• Legendary

A familiar theme, right? Of course, you’ll get Legendaries at best once a month (if you don’t donate) or even less often. And that would be fine, if not for the VERY strange collection system. When your collection reaches a certain level, you simply stop getting new units from boxes. Yes, completely.

And this isn’t fixed by donating: the game is essentially punishing you for playing it too much. It seems to have been somewhat fixed now, but it’s so strange and offensive that I don’t even know how to react to it.

Day of the Dead: Time to check out the game before Halloween

October 2026 is a good time to get acquainted with Phobies. At the end of September, the developers released update 1.17, dedicated to the Day of the Dead holiday, and on October 1st, they launched a themed event. As part of the update, the game received eight new creatures with unique combat mechanics.

Along with the new creatures, a Day of the Dead-themed main menu and map were added. The limited-time event offers an expanded reward track, and VIP pass holders receive accelerated progression and are guaranteed to unlock El Cuca-Roach.

According to the developers’ published schedule, the event ends on November 3, 2026. So you have time to get to know the game before Halloween, try out the new mechanics, and decide whether to continue collecting the local nightmare creatures after the holiday ends.

Is Phobies Worth Playing? Review Summary

Phobies is worth a try if you enjoy turn-based strategy, collection games, and unusual horror with a dark humorous twist. However, if you’re looking for a full-fledged single-player campaign, quick matches, or a game where progression is completely independent of investments, Phobies may disappoint.

With Halloween just around the corner , it has everything needed to captivate any fan of unusual monsters. Just remember: the scariest monster in Phobies isn’t necessarily one with teeth, claws, or electric attacks. Sometimes, it’s an opponent who’s already captured three Panic Points, leaving you wondering why your favorite nightmare didn’t survive the second turn.