Preview – Fights in Tight Spaces: Prologue PC

This game hooked me from the second I saw the trailer during the Guerilla Collective stream back in June. I’m a huge deck-builder fan and the stylish, highlighted art design and the interesting use of space to limit the player and force them to work around cramped situations to their benefit made this an instant wishlist add. I made sure to call dibs on a review code, too, should one come in. Alas, the game never released in Summer as it was supposed to and was continually pushed back. I made sure to check on it every now and then but there was very little movement, with the Steam page now stating ‘Early 2021’. However, last month everything changed when the first mission was released for free, as a separate prologue, and it did not disappoint. 

The deck-building layer itself is actually very simple. 1 – You start with a basic deck of cards and are given the option to add a new card from a random selection at the end of each fight, with tougher battles and special objectives often offering more advanced or better versions of current cards. 2 – Cards can be upgraded or removed entirely at ‘gyms’, to streamline the deck and make it more effective. Easy! Well, actually, not so much. See, there’s nothing quite like Fights in Tight Spaces so it can be hard to understand what is considered good at first. The ability to simply push an enemy one space might not seem so fantastic but it is actually massive, even if it doesn’t deal any direct damage, as it allows you to arrange enemies to hit each other, open up escape routes when surrounded, and even insta-kill powerful opponents by knocking them out of the arena (or I assume into hazards, too, in the full release).

By informing the player of each enemy’s traits and intentions, it makes the game more like a lovely violent puzzle than anything else. Think Into the Breach with ability cards. But, whereas that (fantastic) game is all about being completely aware of your static moveset and plotting them out perfectly after a lot of forward thinking, you’re going to be drawing a random selection of options here, so you have to be ready for anything. That touch of spice changes everything, especially because the deck you’re pulling potential actions from will become more and more influenced by your own design as you progress. Pulling a lot of unusable cards? That’s not RNGesus punishing you, that’s your fault for spending everything on one awesome card instead of sharpening the sides and remaining flexible. Pulling awesome cards but not sure how to use them? Gotta work on that strategy and positioning. Remember – it might be more useful to not damage anyone at all one round, and it might be safer to just accept you’re not going to pull off the optional side-objectives without tanking a lot of damage, forgoing the bonus and focusing on survival for particularly hairy brawls.

No need to fret, though. I’m sure each new mission and the hurdles they present will bring plenty of deaths with them, but as each mission is a bite-size roguelike ‘chapter’, you won’t be expected to start from the very beginning each time. It seems like there’s actually a full campaign here, instead of the usual repeated ‘run’ mechanics with scaling difficulty that Monster Train and Slay the Spire employ. By breaking the game into smaller chunks, each of which consist of their own randomly generated levels, enemies types, and optional paths, a lot of possibilities open up around being more inclusive in terms of story-telling and difficulty. Seriously, I have seen a huge number of complaints about the other deck-builders mentioned previously because of their high barrier to entry. Here, it sounds like new players will be given the opportunity to start small and work up. It will allow a much wider audience to dip their toes into both halves of this genre-smasher by not having to deal with as much in the early missions. This does leave me to wonder how replayable it will be, however. The steep challenge is a significant part of wanting to play game after game in deck-builders, normally, as you work hard to learn, adapt, and finally overcome everything that gets thrown at you with a perfectly sculpted set of abilities and excellent decision making.

Hopefully all that good stuff will be realised on release of the finished product. I mean, surely they’ve earned the benefit of the doubt with this great free-to-play Prologue. There are a couple of other things I would like to see improved, though. The information and iconography can often be confusing and although slowing down and paying more attention can of course fix this, it would be nice for things to be immediately obvious (especially the difference between the Slip and Shift cards, which were similar enough for me to constantly confuse!). I’d also love to see the animations flow together more. I understand each animation is triggered from distinct actions but it feels real robotic when several attacks are chained together in rapid succession. Maybe a Superhot-style fight-scene replay? If the random events could be improved, too, that would be nice, because if I learned anything from my time playing Fights in Tight Spaces it’s that it’s never worth it to roll the dice on them. But mostly I just hope it’s as good as it looks to be from this small slice we have available. They have an incredible foundation and I would love to see something special built from it, but you don’t even have to believe me – Go! Download it and try for yourself right now!