A while back, I wrote a review of Slay the Spire. I hadn’t beaten the game yet (and still haven’t – though I’ve successfully ascended with one of the classes), but I had played the game enough to get a handle on the structure and the mechanics. I’ve reached a similar point with Fights in Tight Spaces, but here I don’t think I’m going to be continuing to play the game.
Fights in Tight Spaces is also a rogue-like deck builder, but with a more tactical mindset. You’re put in the suit and tie of a spy sent on various missions, which put you through various close quarters combat scenarios. This ultimately ends up looking like a mix of Jason Bourne with the visual stylings of the opening credits of Casino Royale (the Daniel Craig one). Your moves are determined by your deck of cards, and you gain cards through successfully completing fights, which deal with opponents with different tactics and offensive or defensive abilities.
On paper, that’s fine. Where it stumbles is the execution, particularly how it relates to how Slay the Spire handles your health resource and your money resource. In this case, Slay the Spire handles these problems with more elegance, in a way that makes the game more enjoyable for me, particularly on repeat plays.
In Slay the Spire, you gain money from fights in addition to gaining a card or maybe an item, and that money is used to remove extraneous cards from your deck and to buy new cards or relics. Healing is done for free by resting at campfires, where you have to choose between regaining health or upgrading your cards. At the end of each Act, your character is fully healed, giving an incentive to go all out on the final boss of the act. Plus, you gain Relics on the way through the act that will provide abilities to help shape your build.
In Fights in Tight Spaces, on the other hand, resources are more scarce. You receive additional money through completing special objectives on missions, and you’re going to need every penny. In addition to shops where you can buy additional cards or discard old ones, healing also costs money. Further, after completing a mission (the equivalent of an Act) you don’t recover your Health before moving on to the next mission. If you barely scrape by on a final boss for a mission, you’re screwed going into the next mission. While there are healing items you can acquire through the game – generally by completing bonus objectives or by buying them in shops, they’re expendable items, and make for another big financial trade off: card upgrade, expendable items for later, addition to deck, remove a weak card, or just not die?
It makes for an unpleasant surprise when you finally clear that first mission, get ready to start the next, and then discover that you’re starting the next mission already dead on your feet.
Did I hate this game? No. Do I think the loop has some fun – yes. I like the elements of tactical movement and positioning that come up over the course of the missions. I just wish I had at least the option to have some of those assists from Slay the Spire, if only as a checkbox I could turn on in a menu or as a difficulty setting. As it stands, it makes for enough of a problem that I’m going to hold off on the sequel until I hear otherwise.
If you do decide to pick it up, Fights in Tight Spaces is available from the Humble Store (affiliate link).
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