Very fun addicting Roguelike

**Spoiler Free**

Quick Overview: Fights in Tight Spaces combines roguelike deckbuilding with tactical strategy to much success. Think Slay the Spire combined with Into the Breach. Wrapped in the high-octane aesthetic of a “Superhot” abstraction, this turn-based game manages to create an addicting and engrossing puzzle every level of the way. It’s not without it’s flaws and shortcoming. But if these ingredients add up to something that interests you, this game delivers.

Gameplay: There are two very different yet connected aspects to this roguelike game: deckbuilding and tactical positioning. Like any Slay the Spire-esque roguelike, you go through a series of levels, grouped into chapters, with some branching level choices. Levels will telegraph the number of enemies and potential rewards available upon completing optional objectives. Between levels you can add cards to your deck from a choice of three, or when you arrive at a gym you can edit your deck by adding, upgrading, and removing cards for a price. The end of each chapter has a boss, and the final chapter is basically one long boss fight. There are a variety of difficulty levels you can choose from, with easier ones providing more assistance like undos, and harder ones brutally unconcerned with your mistakes.
The difficulty you choose can have a huge effect on your deckbuilding strategy. Easier modes might guarantee you draw at least one of your movement cards each hand, meaning you want 2-3 good movement cards. But harder modes don’t assist you, so you need a good balance. However, your deck is only half the puzzle.

The tactical strategy element in this game is the other side of the roguelike coin. Much like Into the Breach, the game takes place on what are essentially small grid-based boards, where position is crucial. Enemies telegraph their moves, creating that turn-based puzzle. You must also manage your Momentum (mana) and Combo meters. Momentum is used to play cards, while Combo is used for certain cards as an alternate resource if you have enough (Combo stacks with each attack, but is lost with each space moved). This all leads to lots of satisfying “think-y” moments.
Yet at the same time, the game doesn’t feel too slow or dragged out. It’s a turn-based game with strategy, so obviously it’s not a fast-paced game (despite the theme). But I personally feel the game flows well and doesn’t get hung up on rulesets or overcomplicated variables.

That being said, the biggest hurdle you need to get over before you can experience the flow of combat is “learning the cards”. There are 200+ cards to potentially get familiar with, and due to the theme, they are all seem like slight variations on punches and kicks. It can be hard to identify or remember what each card does. Due to the artwork all looking kind of the same, and all depicting the same kind of combat, it can be hard to remember what each card does. The visual language is not very diverse. You have cards like Quick kick or Front kick, which both show a character kicking. You wouldn’t know at first glance that Front kick is the best card in the game. There are many examples of this. These cards become very familiar though, and you learn what they do at a quick glance. But before then, it can feel very overwhelming because everything kind of looks the same.

The game also seems to have unbalanced cards. Some cards are just not very good compared to others. Some enemies are immune to certain types of attacks, so it’s good to put a variety of answers in your deck. But some enemies (like the final boss) are theoretically impossible to beat if you don’t build a deck with the right kind of variety. So, though there are a decent number of cards, you’re going to typically handle smaller subset, favoring good cards over others. So you will become familiar with the ones you frequently use.

TIP: The biggest tip I can give is to look at this discussion thread on Steam called “Is there a guide to win for every starting deck?”. Users fri_freeman and corvo_corvus talk about some basic strategy. I found this immensely helpful, and regularly referenced it. It’s a really helpful way to orient yourself and learn about the game. It’s brief, but I owe my enjoyment of the game to this thread. You can read it here: https://gtm.you1.cn/app/1265820/discussions/0/3198115500367499124/

I’ll also add that the pacing of the late meta game is a little unbalanced. If you want to get 100% achievements, you are going to have to grind A LOT. I’ve read players playing 170+ hours without hitting the required XP, so be warned. It’s a grind once you’ve completed everything else the game has to offer, which I probably did in 60-ish hours (I wasn’t keeping track). While the gameplay loop is fun, it gets repetitive once you’ve seen everything.

Overall, this game is a lot of fun to play. Basing a turn-based game around a high-octane martial arts game sounds counter-intuitive, but it actually works really well! It’s like it hones in on the strategic thought process that an outnumbered action hero might be making in real time, but spreads that out so us average folk can engage with the dance. It’s also an accessible way to engage in fight sequences if you can’t in real-time due to injury or slow reaction times.

Atmosphere: I wouldn’t call the atmosphere immersive, as it is very abstract and minimalistic. However, the theme of a special agent fighting thugs in face-to-face combat is very fun. In this case, the gameplay is what’s very engaging, and the theme’s role is to get your attention and focus it to the task at hand. The “Superhot” artistic influence is clearly evident, and the single “color washes” over any character details make them feel more like chess pieces than individual people. There is also little to no story in this game. It’s just flavor text at the beginning of a run. So there’s no world to explore or get lost in, even from merely a backstory perspective. On the contrary, a victory or defeat is very sudden and anti-climactic. A defeat takes you to a defeated screen, and a victory just has flavor text. I wish there was a little more closure.

The techno and dubstep soundtrack might seem antagonistic to a turn-based puzzle game. But it really helps to enforce the theme in this one, and helps you feel like a little bad-ass. So I appreciated it, but I could see some being annoyed by it.

In general, being able to slow an action sequence down into a turn-based action game provides a unique experience unlike most in this genre. As somewhat a counterpoint to this, there is an ability to watch a replay of the level you just completed, so you can watch the action unfold “in real time”, as if it were an action sequence in a movie. I really appreciated this extra feature, and it feels unique. Now. the animation in this game is very stilted and stylized. There are pauses between every move, and it doesn’t flow smoothly. But if you’re someone who can’t play a typical action game like Sifu for whatever reason, it’s an accessible way to get some kind of similar experience.

Overall, I wouldn’t call the atmosphere of Fights in Tight Spaces immersive or fleshed out. But it is very memorable, and it adds an extra fun vibe to a fun game.

Conclusion: If deck building roguelikes, tactical turn-based combat, and action movie sequences all speak to you, then this game doesn’t disappoint. There’s a puzzle element that is highly addictive, and keeps you wanting to do just one turn more. I wish there was more content to explore, but there’s a decent amount here. It can be hard to get your baring’s at first, but once you learn the ropes the combat flows well and you’ll be punching and kicking bad guys feeling like a turn-based bad-ass. I got the game on sale, but it’s probably worth it at full price. Recommend.