Fangtopia Launches Today on PC, PS5 and Switch 2 With a Ghoulish Second Mode

Absolutely Games' hex-tile kingdom builder Fangtopia launched today, October 26, on PC, PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2, timed to land five days before Halloween without leaning on a single jump scare. The Guildford, UK studio bills it as a "scare-free" spin on the cosy city-building genre, trading graveyard horror for goofy ghouls, bashful werewolves and a hex grid that never punishes a wrong move.

A Pastoral Builder, Reskinned for Spooky Season

Fangtopia hands players a deck of hexagonal tiles — fields, towns, mountains, forests and railroads — and asks them to arrange a kingdom around a creepy castle of their choosing. Matching terrain edges scores points and advances objectives, and there is no timer forcing a decision: the only real constraint is a finite tile stack, and misplaced pieces can always be undone. It is a formula indie builders like Dorfromantik popularized, reworked here with a Halloween coat of paint rather than Alpine scenery.

Absolutely Games' own pitch leans into that contrast. The team wanted the relaxing, zoomed-out satisfaction of a tile-matching puzzle without asking players to sit through anything frightening, so Fangtopia's monsters are cute first and creepy second. Full details and system requirements sit on the game's Steam store page.

Two Modes on Day One

Launch ships with a pair of ways to play. Fangtopia mode is the on-ramp: five non-river terrain types, a standard tile stack and sessions built to wrap up quickly. Ghoulish mode is the one built for players who already know the systems.

• Fangtopia mode: the five core terrain types, a standard-length tile stack, no river tiles.
• Ghoulish mode: adds river tiles as a sixth terrain type, lets players swap the tile queued up next, introduces larger multi-tile groups that must be placed together, and hands out a bigger stack for longer runs.

From a 2024 Prototype to a Three-Platform Launch

Fangtopia is only the second release from Absolutely Games, a small strategy-focused studio that debuted with the tactics game Classified: France '44. The tile-builder started life as a free itch.io prototype in mid-2024 before publisher Secret Mode — best known for shipping the horror hit Still Wakes the Deep — signed on to take it to a wider audience.

That partnership expanded the game's ambitions well past its original PC-only scope. Absolutely Games CEO James Brooksby confirmed the PlayStation 5 release through a PlayStation Blog post in September, with a Nintendo Switch 2 version following the same announcement. The result is a game that went from a solo developer's devlog to a same-day launch across three platforms and three PC storefronts in a little over two years.

“Fangtopia is a world filled with merry monsters and goofy ghouls, crafted by your own hands.”James Brooksby, CEO, Absolutely Games

Landmarks, Portals and a Stickerbook Full of Monsters

Scoring in Fangtopia feeds back into the map itself. Completing enough matches unlocks eerie landmarks, each carrying its own objective that rewards fresh tiles once finished, which keeps the build from ever stalling out for lack of pieces. Portals also surface in the ocean tiles as a kingdom grows, and opening one summons a new creature — gremlins, werewolves and banshees among them — who pay out bonus tiles once they are given a fitting habitat to settle into.

A built-in Stickerbook tracks every landmark a player has completed, turning a single kingdom into a checklist players can chase across repeat sessions rather than a one-and-done puzzle board.

The Same Game on Every Platform

Absolutely Games has been explicit that the console editions are not a cut-down port. PlayStation 5 and Switch 2 owners get the same tile set, the same two modes and the same Stickerbook as the PC version, tuned for a controller rather than a mouse, and every platform — PC included — shares a global leaderboard for players chasing the highest-scoring kingdom. That kind of console parity is still not a given for a small UK studio shipping its second game on three platforms at once, and it is as much a credit to Secret Mode's production support as to the hex-tile design underneath it.

Where to Find It

Fangtopia is out now on PC via Steam, the Epic Games Store and Stove, alongside day-one releases on PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2. Players on Sony's console can also stream it through PlayStation Portal. Secret Mode and Absolutely Games have not announced any post-launch modes beyond Fangtopia and Ghoulish, though Brooksby has left the door open to more. More on the publisher's slate is available at Secret Mode's official site, and Absolutely Games keeps its own development notes on its itch.io project page.