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Phobies:Turn-Based Tactics

Hearth-Forged Fears Clash

Ratings

Age

13+

Category

Strategy

Languages

English

Phobies is a tactical CCG where you collect and battle with personifications of human fears. From tiny spiders to giant monsters, build a deck of over 100 unique Phobies. Face off in 1v1 turn-based matches on a hex-grid board. The goal is to destroy your opponent's heart or control the 'Panic Points' to drain their health. Featuring an asynchronous multiplayer mode and a bizarrely beautiful art style, Phobies offers a deep and rewarding strategic experience unlike any other.

Dinsun Expert Review

Our Expert Score

88/100

Phobies is an incredible breath of fresh air in the tactical CCG genre. It replaces the tired fantasy archetypes with a brilliantly grotesque world of living nightmares. The central mechanic—summoning Phobies to control 'Panic Points'—is pure strategic genius. It feels like a mix of Chess and Hearthstone, but with a much higher emphasis on board positioning and area control.

The art style is phenomenal, managing to be both creepy and charming, and the voice acting for the Phobies is top-tier. What I appreciate most is the 'Asynchronous' multiplayer, which allows you to have multiple matches going at once and take your turns at your own pace. It removes the stress of a timer while still maintaining the depth of a high-level strategy game. It’s a polished, deep, and wonderfully weird experience that tactical fans shouldn't miss.

Dinsun reviewed on: Thu Feb 26 2026

Features

1

Unique tactical hex-grid combat

2

Asynchronous and real-time PvP modes

3

Over 120 unique Phobies to collect

4

Stunningly grotesque hand-drawn art

Upcoming Events

It's Wabbit Season
The egg awakens. You know Egg-Zackley.
Tue Apr 14 2026 - Thu Apr 30 2026

Tips & Walkthrough

Gameplays

Screenshot

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Q&A

While you can buy card packs, the game's matchmaking ensures you face players with similar power levels, prioritizing tactical skill.

Ratings & Reviews

Amazing game, we needed a new strategy board game like this
Tue Jun 07 2022 Hey3860531

Where do I begin… like many have said, it reminds me of Outwitters (which I loved but the devs stopped supporting). Some have said there is a small team behind this one and you would never know. Game is polished, art is lovable and unique, strategy is there, casual mode, ranked ladder, bonus puzzles, seasonal rewards, friendly battles… you get the idea. It even seems like they have interest in building a community behind it with discord and forums. And it’s all FREE. People are complaining about having to grind too much and I think they’re forgetting it’s free to play… we play to grind, sure. But also for the fun of the game itself. And obviously, you can pay for progression if you want (which I will be doing because I already have the itch). I wouldn’t say there’s too much advantage to “pay to win” as it boils down to strategy and rank by the end of it, you can still outplay others by playing smart. All in all, I’m very excited to see where this game goes and what additions they can make as I work towards collecting the already expansive list of Phobies. I’m hooked lol. If you’re on the fence, just give it a shot, it’s a free game that if you enjoy a little strategy, I think this could quickly become a favorite.

Amazing game design & Genius puns
Wed Jan 24 2024 Patchlocke

I've been playing this for the past few weeks, & am so glad my friend referred it. Even the challenges are fun to attempt. I recommend them to newcomers because it’s incredibly helpful in teaching the more complex strategies & win conditions. The monetization is fair with frequent enticing sales. My main criticism is the roster selection. After a certain amount of Phobies, the game allows you to create a favorites list. However, rather than have your roster preset to those favorites during matches, the game forces you to scroll through your entire collection. It’s annoying to keep pressing the star every turn. I ask the devs to let us start in the favorites view, then decide whether we want to dip into our less desirables. I understand us being forced into the miscellaneous Phobies if we run out of or can’t afford to play any favorites, but it’s quite frustrating as a default. Maybe defaulting to favorites during gameplay can be setup through the album feature. My only other complaint would be the inability to rejoin an arena match after getting disconnected. Otherwise, great game. You always surprise me with how many fears you’ve brought to life. And the puns!😂 I hope this game lasts a long time.

Fun Beautiful game, not without faults.
Wed Apr 05 2023 $tatic

Been playing for a week so far. The art and animation is really great. I have nothing but praise for that part of the game. The gameplay is good, the “Phobies” while quite difficult to collect are interesting and rewarding to play with and find the best combos. I wish I could rate this game higher but there’s one big thing that irks me… The resource gathering cap. Why would you penalize your players for playing the game? Once I reach my cap it’s irritating to know I could keep playing but not receive any reward. I have turns to take but if I’m capped I don’t play, I just wait until the cap resets and then go back in and take my turns and start new games. I very much hate the cap, it definitely makes me want to play the game less often and I may not stay with it for that reason. If I want to grind let me grind. Another thing I’m not a fan of, thought much less of an issue than the one I just mentioned, is the infinite redos you can make on your live turns. I’m a fan of being able to redo all your moves on the async games, but in the live ones watching my opponent redo every move multiple times over and over until their time clock runs out is a major drag. I wish I could rate it higher because it is a cool game, but I don’t think it’s a game that I’ll stick with in the long run.

Needs balancing
Tue May 02 2023 Dravenn

I live games like this! You pay “keys” to get monsters out so the monsters don’t need to be perfectly balanced although these seem close. What you DO need to worry about is the first player advantage. They give the second player one extra summoning key. This is not a good enough answer to offsetting the first player advantage. I saw a lot of people immediately quoting games when they don’t go first. Now that I’ve played enough games I realize they’re right and I do the same. If this gets fixed I’d give this game 5 stars! Otherwise I’ll probably get tired of it soon. My suggestions would be either one less key for starter and one more for second, or put the X locations closer to each players base. When you take one of these locations it does damage to the other player 200 hit points per X location your leading by. So obviously people just race to get these and again whomever goes first has another HUGE advantage. Put them right next to the the start locations so you have to fight your way back there. I don’t want this whole review to be negative because honestly this game is great! The graphics are sick, the game play is solid and fun, all of the monsters are super creative!

Almost perfect
Sun Jul 10 2022 PandacornPlayz

First of all, this is one of the best strategy games I’ve played and is very well designed. Unfortunately, there are several ways in which this game gives a large advantage to players who spend money on this game. First of all, cards can be leveled up, which seems harmless enough, but, given a large enough discrepancy between the levels of two cards, certain counter strategies become no longer usable because of the stat differences. Leveling up cards is tied to two resources: cards and experience, there is a limit on how much experience that can be obtained daily that can only be increased with an in app purchase. As for cards, you are limited to 9 boxes from just playing per day and card packs are tied to another resource that’s limited daily or a currency that is obtained extremely slowly or with real money. New units can only be obtained from card packs. Anything with a limit on it can be doubled or uncapped with an in app purchase. Progress is completely limited by how much money you spend and directly interferes with gameplay. And because your units are not in a deck, but rather all of them are always available to you so unless you have every unit in the game maxed out, the paying player is always at an advantage. Honestly, this could all be solved by having a game mode where all units are set to the same level, or you’re limited in how many units you can bring in before matchmaking, or you just removed the unfairly low limits on resources required for progression. TLDR: this otherwise great game gives an unfair advantage to paying players that cannot be evened out without having every unlock in the game at it’s maximum level which would likely take several months if not over a year to accomplish without paying.

Engaging but terrible match system
Wed May 03 2023 Nanrina95

First off I want to say how great of an experience this was. From the voice acting to the graphics and overall user experience. It’s been a long time since I’ve played a game that was this engaging. The concept and the art is fantastic! But ultimately having multiple matches at a time (instead of a story mode with multiplayer elements) makes this game fall short. You’re not really able to focus in games and it feels like you’re splitting your attention into multiple places. This will end up driving you crazy and it gets redundant pretty fast. Nothing makes you excited for your next game and you will only find yourself wanting your turn to be over so you can hurry up to your next game. Also, collecting these cards is NOT fun compared to other cars games. You collect multiple Phobies right off the bat then collect individuals after that. Nothing makes you attached to these characters and they feel like it makes very little impact to learn more. Either way I think I would support the company as a whole with future endeavors due to the love and effort I see in this game but apart from the creativity, the game itself lacks as a whole.

This is the EA sports of strategy games.
Fri Oct 06 2023 garrishh

They have great quality in their designs, and the strategy aspect is fantastic. But the devs feel money hungry. I get that you need money to stay afloat as a game designer. Especially as an indie game developer. However this game just doesn’t feel worth my time or money anymore. I loved that they made it easier to play with your friends, there is live arena matches, and async battles with your buddies you don’t earn anything from those though. And getting a new phobie once you have a few is like pulling teeth. There chance of getting one feels really low. They only thing that would make this redeemable is if the tears you earned gave you a chance of getting a new phobie. But compared to the packs you have to pay for its little to none. If there was a function for friend games where you could use any phobie in the game THAT would make all of this worth it in my opinion. Because almost all of my friends dropped off this game same week. It’s not worth the time to them. I’m not saying this game is bad! I just think it could be better if it was more open to casual players.

(Was) Loving it!
Tue Aug 02 2022 Im_Adopted

Update: A lot of bad features and qualities were exposed to me the further I played this game. You basically have to spend money to hopefully get better Phobies, otherwise you start losing games to players that do. The currency you get from playing is capped daily, the upgrade costs get higher and higher for Phobies, and the paid packs to unlock new Phobies are only a chance, meaning you’ll likely get duplicates most of the time. I got tired of losing games and uninstalled. This game could be so much better if there weren’t currency caps, or chances of duplicates, or both. I mean, how many Phobies are there? This will take me forever to unlock them all… Original: I wasn’t sure I wanted to try this game when I first saw it in the App Store, but after giving it a try last night and playing for 3 hours straight, I’m definitely loving this! I really like the art style, the variety of Phobies available to use and collect, the strategy of the gameplay, and the fact there’s not only an asynchronous mode where you take a turn and wait for your opponent to make one later, but also a live mode where you take turns until the game is over in one session! There’s a lot of depth to the currency and reward systems, and it doesn’t feel like you need to pay for currency or packs just to get ahead in the game - as a free to play gamer, I’m enjoying the pace of games and rewards over time. There’s so many ways to use the Phobies in a game, and I’m still figuring out ways to use them together with new strategies! Also, I love the map design and variety of maps - there’s always an opportunity for a unique game and new experiences! Can’t wait to see more updates and collect more Phobies!!! Thanks for making such a great game and making it free to play!!!

Some Youtube Videos found!

News found!

Cross-Platform Strategy Title Phobies Announced For PC & MobileCross-Platform Strategy Title Phobies Announced For PC & Mobile

Indie developer and publisher Smoking Gun Interactive announced their new cross-platform strategy game Phobies is on the way.

Bleeding Cool News Mon Aug 29 2022

Phobies is an upcoming turn-based strategy game set to release in early 2022Phobies is an upcoming turn-based strategy game set to release in early 2022

Developer Smoking Gun Interactive has announced the early 2022 release of a turn-based strategy game Phobies for Android and iOS devices.

GamingonPhone Mon Aug 29 2022

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