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Facilitating an infinitely replayable Roguelite campaign as well as merciless daily beatdowns, Fights in Tight Spaces is a Card Battler in the purest sense of these words. Its sharp-cut gameplay reflects how we all naively imagine conducting ourselves in a fight. To succeed here, you need to stay calm, which isn't easy, considering how exciting the battles are. Fix your tie, throw a handful of pocket sand in the nearest thug's eyes, slam his head against the bed, push a hunk off the balcony, sidestep, kick the ones in front and behind you simultaneously, stab a guy's pressure point with a finger, then immediately dive under his armpit, jump off the wall and end another life with a flying punch. Set it all up in such a way that the remaining few of your enemies would hit and shoot each other on their turn! After the fight is over, enjoy the gloating delight of watching a real-time replay. It's hard to overstate how gratifying and hypnotically gripping this perfectly animated asskicking is. In the beginning, you go with the flow of combat, and later - control it.
Flavour
Your special agent's immaculate mannerisms and appearance reflect the elegant ways this game's meant to be played. He always goes against overwhelming odds, sometimes it's disturbing to simply take a peek over your hand of cards and see him surrounded by a crowd of ninjas and hulks, each of them ready to end a run after just one mistake. But remember - they hit hard, you hit harder. Calculate and predict, do your best not to get hit since, while you can take a beating, you can't afford it. And keep in mind that you can't play it safe if you want to get paid, which turns local combat into a balancing act of risk and reward. To help you with it, the game provides a comprehensive UI that tells you all you need to know as well as a clean, precisely stylised image, featuring isometric 3D with tastefully accentuated colours. The fighting mood gets magnified by all the crunching and tearing, thuds of varied intensity, and upbeat dubstep mixed with some kind of 90s dance music, I think? The kind to make combat feel energetic and cool, with a drop of vague nostalgia and maybe even some Hotline Miami vibes chiming in.
The encounters take place in such memorable locations as men's rooms, prison showers, public toilets, or even a plane wing. Bikers, prison gangs, ninjas, and Italian mafia whose business you'll get to interfere with all have their dangerous quirks and moves, so taking them on is a demanding task. You'll learn the hard way to pay attention to enemy abilities, which vary from instant action, AoE swipes and counters to following your every move during your turn. Sure enough, there're mid-bosses and a multi-stage fight against the main baddie at the end, but I won't spoil any of it. However, there's a lot of fun to be had when dealing with elites like, say, Drunken Master who restores his health and dodges attacks or a bartender who distracts you with a cocktail shaker. Yeah, this game isn't a stranger to a bit of dry humour, reflected both in enemy designs and playing with Bondiana tropes in the briefings. I'm not so sure, but sometimes Fights in Tight Spaces made me think it happens in the same world as XIII, also one of the best games made for this setting.
Cards and Meta
When it comes to mechanics, this is a traditional card battler with an added positioning. You use replenishing energy, which is called Momentum, to play offensive, defensive, and mobility cards, then pass that prerogative to your enemy and pray for a good draw. Positioning is key, allowing you to take advantage of the surroundings by pushing enemies into walls, each other's attacks, and the void beyond. My favourite thing. The game's card collection allows this and much more, it's extremely thought-out and diverse. There're cards with compound effects and cards with choice, presenting an array of deadly synergies for every theory crafter's pleasure. Push, pull, grapple, throw, block, counter, melee, ranged, buffs... you get the gist. Many cards demand certain conditions: some especially powerful ones need a precise position and some can only be played when you have enough Combo Points. Those add when you strike or reposition enemies and deplete when you move. Thereby, in combat, the management of your Momentum, Health, Block, and Combo Points is paramount.
You won't spend much time on the map out of combat, but you'll get to make crucial decisions nevertheless. First of all, your classic branching paths are in place, including their short descriptions and possible rewards, so you won't go in wherever completely blind. Aside from battles that could have different side goals like picking up a suitcase in a set number of turns or protecting an informant, you'll get involved with self-explanatory random events, the Clinic, and the Gym. The latter is your bread and butter that provides all kinds of crucial services like card purchases, deck trimming, and expensive upgrades. This is why you need to race for the optional turn limits. The Clinic is, uh, forget about it, it's overpriced anyway. What you shouldn't forget about are the Enhancements - those are like Relics in Slay the Spire, only not given as often. Sure enough, they have game-changing properties like increased Momentum, healing, damage modifiers, special cards, etc. Nothing too interesting, yet nothing to scoff at either. Finally, obviously, by playing the game, more cards and starter decks get unlocked.
Perfection
Uncommonly for a roguelite, the game presents a range of well-explained difficulty options. I opted for Classic Plus for the training wheels: Rollback (undo a turn 3 times per battle) and the ability to restart a fight or even go back to the map and pick another path. I sure abused these features non-stop, for sometimes I'm stupid, and sometimes the game puts you in a predicament you can't escape unscathed right at the start of a battle. I'm not happy with that, for I feel like the privilege of f*cking myself over is mine alone. Thankfully, you won't see it happening too often. The good news is there's almost zero RNG to the process of punching out teeth and caving in skulls, only the luck of the draw, bad news is that most of your goofs are your fault alone. To see a game in this genre, which is so fair and respects your time is an unusual occurrence. To see me buying it without a discount is an event of a legendary rarity since I'm a Scrooge when it comes to consuming stuff. Fights in Tight Spaces is an exception because it's a perfection. I'm also a giant Scrooge when it comes to calling games that.
P.S. Seriously, try the demo: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1478070/Fights_in_Tight_Spaces_Prologue/
My curator Big Bad Mutuh