The game is named after the ten phases (or melds) a player must advance through to win.

[2] In December 2010, Fundex sold its license rights to Phase 10 to Mattel.

If those scores also happen to be tied, a tiebreaker round is played where the tying players attempt to complete phase ten (or in variants, the last phase each player had tried to complete in the previous round).

For each hand, each player's object is to complete and lay down the current phase, and then rid their hand of remaining cards by discarding them on laid-down Phases, called "hitting".

The dealer shuffles the deck and deals 10 cards, face down, one at a time, to each player.

The remaining deck is placed face-down in the center of the play area to become the draw pile.

Play consists of; Hitting is the way to get rid of leftover cards after making a Phase.

A hit is made by putting a card directly on a Phase already laid down.

Run of 9 alternating colors A variation of play is to allow Floating.

Of course, the player preceding the floater is not actually forced to keep them afloat and may be able to go out themselves, lay down their Phase (thus drastically reducing their score for the hand), or may simply concede the hand by allowing the floater to draw (the card drawn is likely to be an unplayable, thus discardable, card).

This is rare, and usually happens when the floating player completes a phase involving a long run of cards, no one else has completed their Phase, and the floater's run has expanded through all 12 values.

This slightly reduces the luck component inherent in the game, increasing the strategic and/or social element.

The Masters Edition of the game can be played by two to four players and includes additional rules: The Masters Edition comes with 10 Phase cards for each player to keep track of the Phases which they have completed during gameplay.

Instead of cards, players each take turns rolling 10 six-sided dice, 6 marked with 5-10 and the other four with 1-4 and two wilds each.

In 2007 Fundex and Magmic signed a deal that brought Phase 10 to BlackBerry devices.

[6] In 2009 Magmic released the title for iOS,[7] with a Masters Edition in-app purchase available for download in February 2012.

[8] In March 2012 Magmic released both a free and paid version of Phase 10 for Android devices.

In September 2013, Magmic released Phase 10 Dice in the iTunes App Store.

[9] In 2019, Mattel163 Limited released Phase 10: World Tour for Android and iOS, featuring the "Journey" mode which player travels to different worlds and completes levels by completing sets of unique different phases with opponents with different difficulties.