| Chaos Zero Nightmare | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | Pre-Register & Pre-Order | Review |
Chaos Zero Nightmare Review Overview
What is Chaos Zero Nightmare?
Set in a dark sci-fi fantasy universe on the verge of collapse, Chaos Zero Nightmare thrusts players into a world slowly devoured by "Chaos" — a black fog that corrupts entire planets, warping their lands and lifeforms into monstrous aberrations. As humanity’s final line of defense, you take on the role of a Protos, a beacon of order standing against the spreading void. The story centers on Chaos Manifestations, where strange creatures and impossible phenomena begin to take form.
Chaos Zero Nightmare features:
⚫︎ Roguelike deckbuilder gameplay
⚫︎ Non-roguelike turn-based RPG modes
⚫︎ RPG progression elements
⚫︎ Story mode
⚫︎ Endgame dungeons
⚫︎ Character collection through gacha
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Chaos Zero Nightmare's gameplay and story.
| Digital Storefronts | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Stove |
 Google Play |
 App Store |
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| Free | |||||||
Chaos Zero Nightmare Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Very, Very Replayable RNG and Skill (Mostly) Replaces Stamina Builds are Deeply Complex to Make Epiphanies Allow Multiple Playstyles Even Low Rarity Cards Carve a Niche |
Questionable Text and Translations Unintuitive and Ill-Exlained Mechanics Strong Themes, Weak Commitment The PC Client and Launcher is Bad Absolutely Horrible Auto-Play |
Chaos Zero Nightmare Story - 6/10
In a rather noticeable case of playing it safe, Chaos Zero Nightmare’s story comes off as fairly ordinary despite its themes of mental breakdowns, constant fear of death, and testing the limits of humanity. And while it doesn’t suffer (too much) from a lack of character development thanks to its relatively long story arcs, it still feels somewhat sterile due to its short-lived intrigues and lack of lasting foreshadowing. Thankfully, though, the setting holds incredible potential on its own, and the dialogues are decent enough in quality.
Chaos Zero Nightmare Gameplay - 10/10
As if being a roguelike deckbuilder weren’t enough reason to try Chaos Zero Nightmare, it also had the clever idea to merge that system with traditional turn-based RPG gameplay instead of keeping them apart. This fusion makes every run feel rewarding, even in failure, since progress always feels tangible. However, the game struggles with poorly explained mechanics, especially in areas you can’t control, like post-run rewards, and the extremely valuable card removal feature is frustratingly infrequent. Thankfully though, these are easy enough to fix.
Chaos Zero Nightmare Visuals - 8/10
If we’re talking purely about Chaos Zero Nightmare’s combat visuals, it’s a solid 10/10. The battles are packed with stylish yet non-intrusive animations and effects that make every encounter feel like an anime come to life. Outside of combat, however, the game looks noticeably cheap—basic UI, VN-style story delivery without lip-syncing, and low-quality splash art drag the experience down.
Chaos Zero Nightmare Audio - 9/10
Similar to its visuals, almost all of Chaos Zero Nightmare’s audio brilliance is concentrated in its combat. It’s hard-hitting, bass-heavy, and feels like it was designed for some sort of bizarre yet oddly satisfying “getting beaten up in outer space” ASMR video. Unlike the visuals, though, the audio outside combat is still solid enough that navigating menus and browsing through characters or upgrades doesn’t feel hollow or lifeless.
Chaos Zero Nightmare Value for Money - 7/10
Unlike most of its peers that limit rewards behind stamina systems, Chaos Zero Nightmare doesn’t gate its core gameplay at all. You can run dungeons endlessly and grind as many decks as you want—assuming, of course, you’re some kind of robot immune to fatigue. The gacha rates are also fairly generous, with pity counters set reasonably low. On the other hand, the cash shop’s offerings are rather underwhelming, even if the pricing itself is standard fare, and most of your daily crystal income is loaded into the monthly subscription pack.
Chaos Zero Nightmare Overall Score - 80/100
If you’re not chasing the kind of bone-chilling horror its trailers might’ve led you to expect and just want a well-made roguelike deckbuilder, Chaos Zero Nightmare is absolutely worth your time. Its mechanics are solid—if occasionally opaque and a bit frustrating to manage—and its audiovisual presentation is a genuine delight. Sure, it’s still a gacha game, but in this genre, the steady stream of new characters and content is a welcome way to keep things fresh, no matter how you end up earning them.
Chaos Zero Nightmare Review: Plays Like a Dream
Another Roguelike Deckbuilder to Ruin My Life On
Man, I love deckbuilder roguelikes. There’s just something deeply satisfying about card-based action games where every action relies on limited resources and a deck of (semi-)customizable cards dictated by the (sometimes) ever-fair hand of RNG. Sure, I don’t have hundreds of hours in Slay the Spire like some people, but I’ve sunk dozens into its many other similar titles, like Chrono Ark (whose developers, by the way, have announced another roguelike deckbuilder title).
The problem is, we’ve never really had a proper live-service game that fits this genre so we could keep playing long after we’ve finished any of the content provided in the base release—until now.
Enter Chaos Zero Nightmare. Yes, it’s a gacha game first and foremost, packed with the usual fluff and bloat you’d expect from a mobile title from the East, but beneath that exterior lies the same gameplay that has hooked me for hours on end.
Fighting Horrors With The Human Mind
But before diving into the gameplay, we need to talk about something equally important: the setting (please don’t skip this section. It’s pretty good).
Chaos Zero Nightmare takes place in a distant future where humanity has mastered space travel through wormholes, constructing massive spaceships out of enough steel and concrete to give OSHA another set of things to complain about. At the same time, however, as our reach has expanded throughout the cosmos, so has the proverbial darkness under one’s bed as entire regions across the galaxy have become the breeding ground for horrific monsters in trans-dimensional pockets known as Chaos.
To fight these things, humanity sends out highly trained agents paired with navigators—special "guides" called "Protos" (from my favorite RTS game, StarCraft?!) who act as lifelines inside these ever-shifting hellholes. Their role is to serve as commanders of the operation, as well as to serve as the emotional anchors for their combatants and prevent them from suffering from mental breakdowns amidst the Chaos’ twisted machinations.
Beyond that, you also captain one of the Empire’s massive Chaos Infiltration warships, the SS Nightmare, carrying thousands of souls aboard and a significant fraction of your faction’s reputation on your shoulders.
Visceral Themes Ruined by Half-Hearted Commitment
Now, you might be thinking, "Wait, isn’t that kind of similar to the setting of Morimens or Zenless Zone Zero?" And you’d be absolutely right. Its horror elements lean heavily into the same Lovecraftian flavor as Morimens, while its solution to the base conflict feels very reminiscent of Zenless Zone Zero’s Proxies, like Belle and Wise, who lead high Ether Resistance agents through distorted worlds.
Where Chaos Zero Nightmare truly distinguishes itself is through its focus on viscerality. Its central storytelling theme—and even certain gameplay systems—revolve around the mental health of your teammates. The narrative often delves into the psychological toll of venturing into Chaos, as they confront grotesque horrors, mental assaults, and emotional collapse, which the player addresses either through story events or a therapy-like system delivered in a visual novel format.
Unfortunately, these moments rarely land with the impact they need. The stakes and premise are undeniably strong, but the execution feels it cut too many corners to leave a lasting emotional mark. A clear example lies one particular scene where characters witness a gruesome sacrifice by fanatics within Chaos: they react with shock, fight on for a moment, and then simply move forward with life. And despite the dialogue describing them as shaken and strained, the writing itself doesn’t linger long enough for the player to truly feel their unraveling.
It’s truly some rather disappointing stuff.
An RPG’s Certainty with a Roguelike’s Unpredictability
If you’re unfamiliar with how a roguelike deckbuilder works, the core idea is simple: you take a deck of cards into a randomized dungeon and use their effects to battle through whatever challenges or events the game throws your way. Along the journey, you upgrade your cards and add new ones from a semi-random pool of options fate decides to grant you, gradually shaping your deck as you go. By the end, you’ll either have a finely tuned engine built around a cohesive strategy—or a baffling, mismatched collection of cards that only exists because RNG decided to toy with you that day.
As you’d expect, this is a genre defined by volatility, only slightly tempered by the starter cards you bring along. For the most part, you’re completely at the mercy of luck (or your lack thereof). The RPG side of things, however, offers more certainty: you level up, acquire stronger gear, and unlock permanent upgrades that steadily improve your odds with each investment.
Chaos Zero Nightmare combines these two systems in a way reminiscent of other hybrid gacha titles like Uma Musume. These improvements come together in the non-roguelike modes, such as Simulations and Story, where your deck builds, equipment, and upgrades merge into complete Combatant setups for tackling more focused, handcrafted stages. In essence, the roguelike loop becomes an integral part of character progression itself—a clever evolution of both genres working in tandem.
Exploring Chaos is a Mixed Bag of Danger and Disconnect
Chaos Zero Nightmare’s core roguelike dungeons, known as Chaos Manifestations, thankfully aren’t locked behind the usual stamina system. You can run them as many times as you want to farm usable decks for other modes—or at least until you get tired of it, which, let’s be honest, is every roguelike player’s eternal struggle (and yet we still keep playing anyway).
Okay, technically, Chaos Loot, the upgrade materials dropped by area bosses, are locked behind weekly tickets or stamina, but they’re completely optional.
Within these dungeons, you’ll encounter all sorts of inhabitants: fellow imperial subjects, unlucky civilians, zealous cultists, and a bestiary full of monsters eager to turn you into modern art H.P. Lovecraft would be proud of. Occasionally, you’ll even meet the friendlier sort of monsters who would offer to share a meal with you… or preach their heresy with a welcoming tone.
Your encounters will, more often than not, match the theme of the dungeon. For instance, the Chaos Manifestation ruled by a swarm’s queen mostly features insectoid enemies and NPCs. Naturally, you’ll still meet others that aren’t of the creepy-crawly persuasion, but they’re usually there for a reason like researchers, explorers, or, more tragically, victims.
That’s all fine on paper, but things start to fall apart once you read between the lines. Take the civilians, for example. Almost none of them seem to grasp the severity of their situation; even those held captive and facing imminent death act like they’ve just misplaced something worse than their wallets. Meanwhile, the supposed professionals—the ones inside Chaos by choice—don’t sound any more convincing. Their dialogue often reads like a polite chat between coworkers or an awkward reunion dinner rather than the words of people fighting for survival.
It’s that lack of viscerality in the writing that really breaks immersion, especially when the game’s audiovisuals match the supposedly dark themes near-perfectly; eerily atmospheric and satisfyingly grotesque. Sadly, this disconnect isn’t isolated to just these scenes; it’s a consistent problem throughout Chaos Zero Nightmare whenever text is involved, making it a disappointment that’s as predictable as it is frustrating.
Text Problems Aren’t Limited to the Narrative
Unfortunately, that’s not where Chaos Zero Nightmare’s issues with words (or the lack thereof) end. Because, almost comically, it also struggles with things it doesn’t explain at all.
I’m talking about its mechanics. Specifically, the one involving the decks you save after completing a run in a Chaos Manifestation dungeon—the same decks you can later equip on your characters outside roguelike mode.
There are a number of problems with it, but because this review has to end at some point, let’s focus on the biggest one: cards disappearing from your deck. More precisely, the deck you end up with after finishing a run is sometimes different from the one you actually used, with key cards (often your best, high-value ones) simply missing.
The first time I noticed it was during an exceptional run with Haru. I’d managed to get two copies of her signature card, Anchor Shot, both upgraded with unique Divine Epiphanies: the highest-tier enhancement that massively boosts performance. But when I checked my saved data afterward, only one of them remained.
Now, this is probably tied to the “Save Data Value” displayed on the dungeon selection screen—a likely cap that determines how strong your saved deck can be based on the stage’s difficulty. It makes sense in theory; easier stages shouldn’t hand out the same high-end decks as the tougher ones.
After all, the quality of upgrades remains roughly the same across dungeons, with the only major difference being how many you can collect—the deeper (or larger) the dungeon, the more upgrade nodes you’ll encounter. Without that restriction, everyone would just farm the easiest maps for top-tier cards.
And honestly? I wouldn’t mind the system if it were explained anywhere. But it isn’t. I went through every tutorial the game had to offer, and not a single one mentioned it. So it’s no wonder players are calling it a bug—because when something changes your deck outside your control and without your knowledge, what else could you think it is?
In fact, a lot of things are so poorly explained that I initially thought we had a hard cap on claiming Chaos Loot every week, especially because there’s no "+" graphic on the relevant ticket icon. I also thought the gacha functioned differently from other games when, spoiler, it doesn’t.
It Doesn’t Feel Bloated with Content
Despite my frustrations with the game, I found myself completely unable to drop it. In fact, I got so caught up in letting RNG ruin my runs that I ended up dropping another mobile release from the same week—Stella Sora—entirely. Looking back, I realized why: Chaos Zero Nightmare does something surprisingly rare among mobile games.
It rewards the act of starting from scratch in a way most deckbuilder roguelikes, even those with RPG elements, never quite manage. By separating its roguelike mode from everything else, all the while making both essential to each other’s progression and to themselves, it creates a tight feedback loop that perfectly balances the thrill of roguelike resets with the satisfaction of RPG growth.
You play the roguelike mode to build stronger decks, use those decks to clear tougher turn-based stages, and in doing so earn the upgrades you need to push deeper into even harder roguelike dungeons. At the same time, clearing dungeons unlocks more options for future runs, while progressing through other content rewards you with resources that enhance your overall growth. It’s a simple loop, but one that feeds into itself beautifully; two distinct systems that, while unique, serve to complement each other perfectly.
It’s why there’s never any content in Chaos Zero Nightmare that feels like bloat. Well, at least if we’re talking about those related to combat, because the side content like administrative tasks, research, and affection systems provide so little that they might as well be there just for the immersion. You’re always playing towards some higher point in the game, regardless of your successes and failures.
Teambuilding is a Test of Persistence
Another great aspect of Chaos Zero Nightmare lies in how its characters can be built. Thanks to the roguelike structure of its deckbuilding, every character’s cards ends up feeling distinct, shaped by the random upgrades and cards you encounter. This inherent unpredictability gives each character a kind of flexibility that few other systems can achieve organically, allowing them to overcome even rigid skill designs simply out of necessity.
It makes sense, really; a character who can only function in one specific way wouldn’t fit in a roguelike at all. Since every run presents different upgrade choices, each setup inevitably finds—or loses—its own niche, adapting to whatever RNG decides to throw at you.
A great example of this is Haru. Normally, she’s an excellent partner for Khalipe, who relies on her teammates using high-cost cards to activate her own for free. Haru’s signature card, Anchor Shot, conveniently meets the minimum cost needed to trigger some of Khalipe’s abilities, and since it’s highly spammable, the two work beautifully together.
However, once you upgrade Anchor Shot with the version that consumes all remaining offensive cards in your hand to boost its damage, that synergy completely collapses. This happens because Khalipe’s most powerful card "Vulture Ejection"—the one she can activate for free regardless of upgrades—also counts as an offensive card and thus gets consumed in the process.
These kinds of risks and possible rewards are what makes taking every chance at running Chaos Manifestations worth it. You will always get decks that would fit one team or another better or worse. It’s also what had me hooked. I loved figuring out new teams based on the decks I got. And, failing to think of anything, I would just hop back in for another go.
The PC Client and AI are Terrible
Even if you handed me the greatest game ever made, I’d still struggle to enjoy it if simply running it was a pain (no, I’m not calling it a nightmare)—and that’s unfortunately the case with the PC version. It feels less like a port and more like a strange, poorly optimized emulation attempt.
The problems are all over the place: alt-tabbing in or out of the window stalls my system, loading screens eat up CPU and memory like it’s an endurance test, OBS refuses to cooperate unless I tinker with capture settings, and a handful of other frustrating quirks make the whole experience harder than it should be.
And mind you, my system can run Wuthering Waves on max settings with RTX enabled, so for a mostly 2D game to choke like this is honestly baffling. Still, the fact that I’m willing to endure all of that just to play it on a slightly larger screen probably says everything about how much I love this game.
Oh, and avoid using the auto-play. It’s basically playing a worse form of gambling.
Is Chaos Zero Nightmare Worth It?
It’s amazing and absolutely worth your time.
Chaos Zero Nightmare has been one of the most enjoyable games I’ve played in a long time. Despite all the hiccups with its text and its atrocious PC client, I kept coming back to it, even if I had to suffer through all the lag.
The gameplay, particularly how it combines two mutually-exclusive modes into one cohesive experience, is spectacularly done. The audiovisual presentation is strong enough that simply watching battles unfold feels satisfying on its own. And if you can’t put up with the PC version’s performance issues, though, the mobile version thankfully offers a smoother ride.
| Digital Storefronts | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stove |
Google Play |
App Store |
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| Free | |||||||
Chaos Zero Nightmare FAQ
Who’s the best character to reroll for in Chaos Zero Nightmare?
Despite being a non rate-up character, Khalipe is an incredible combatant who fulfills multiple roles ranging from shielding and damage dealing. Haru, the rate-up character, is also an extremely powerful single-target damage dealer with a bit of area damage capabilities.
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Chaos Zero Nightmare Product Information
 |
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| Title | CHAOS ZERO NIGHTMARE |
|---|---|
| Release Date | October 21, 2025 |
| Developer | Super Creative |
| Publisher | Smilegate |
| Supported Platforms | PC, Mobile |
| Genre | Roguelike, Deckbuilder, RPG |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | RP |
| Official Website | Chaos Zero Nightmare Official Website |
