Fobia - St. Dinfna Hotel

In game design wise, 'Fobia' is a great homage to the classic Survival Horrors such as Resident Evil. While the action part against the monster is rather sloppy, the hotel's level design and terrifying atmosphere are quite impressive.

Fobia - St. Dinfna Hotel seems like a mere Resident Evil 7 clone, but shows a unique and distinctive soul thanks to brilliant puzzles and a game structure that reminds us of old horror classics.

Fobia - St. Dinfna Hotel is a gorgeous game with awesome puzzles and a cinematic experience. It just won't be the game for you if combat is essential to you.

Despite it’s flaws, and low production value, FOBIA is a decent alternative to Resident Evil.

Phobia: St. Dinfna Hotel is a good debut for Pulsatrix Studios: in four years they have managed to pack an aesthetically and playfully pleasing horror, with the right mix of puzzle-investigative and shooter elements. Generally you notice the commitment of the team, which perhaps could have dared slightly more: some puzzles are too trivial, others require excessive backtracking and can confuse the player a lot. The graphics sector is good, thanks to a good use of the Unreal Engine but among rather detailed environments and objects it is inevitable to notice others of poor quality, which slightly damage the beauty of Phobia, whose narrative fabric unfortunately knows already seen.

With an interesting environment packed with puzzles and mysteries but a distinct lack of enemy variety and scares, Fobia should only be checked into if you can overlook its detriments.

Slowly working your way through the hotel, taking in the gorgeously detailed environment, wracking your brain to figure out how to progress, remembering all of the blocked paths you can now access with a newly acquired key item—these are the moments when the game is at its absolute best. Had the title leaned into this as the main aspect of the experience, you could very well have been reading a recommendation for one of the genre’s premier titles. Instead, Fobia – St. Dinfna Hotel is an amazing exploration game that periodically gets in its own way with lackluster shooting and action sequences. It’s still well worth your time, but it’s disappointing to think about how much more it could have been.

Fobia: St. Dinfna Hotel is a perfectly tolerable survival-horror game. You won't regret playing it. But likely because a month from now, you won't recall ever having played it.