Fights in Tight Spaces Gameplay Preview – Deck Building, Turn Based Strategy

Fights in Tight Spaces is a pretty neat turn based strategy game that uses a deck building card game as the main mechanic.

You play the role of a secret agent taking on missions to bring down entire criminal organizations by yourself. It is a condensed turn based strategy game at heart. You and the enemy take turns moving and attacking. The enemies can only move or attack on their turn so thankfully you can use this to your advantage and position yourself in a place where enemies can’t hit you.

Positioning is also vital because you can instantly down enemies by throwing them off certain areas of the map as well as use special moves that require walls or other structures to be nearby the target. You can also take advantage of some careful positioning to make enemies attack each other. As the game progresses, enemies will have an overwatch like ability where they will automatically attack any target moving into their line of sight. Positioning is an extremely vital part of the game as taking unnecessary hits in combat will make it very difficult to make it to the end of the map.

To control movement and combat, everything is done through the card combat system. It is very similar to a deck building game. You pick a starting deck and customize it as the game goes on. Every turn you draw a random hand of cards. Momentum is your mana equivalent. Each card has a different momentum cost and as long as you have the momentum available, you are able to use that card. The cards can vary from simply letting you move to a new location to countering hits to dealing massive damage with special attacks.

The balanced deck is available from the start and the counter hit deck is unlocked next. You can customize each deck by adding, upgrading, and removing cards to your liking by accessing the gym or random events on the map. The card combat system is pretty solid and being able to keep track of your cards and making the best out of your hand feels satisfying when you pull off the right combos.

Overall, Fights in Tight Spaces is a pretty interesting take on the turn based strategy genre. It combines the perma death of roguelikes, the dungeon crawling of games like Darkest Dungeon, and is built on a very solid deck building card combat system. The minimal graphics looks great and the player can focus on thinking about their strategy and not be distracted. The art style also looks great for the flashy high damage moves. The game play is incredibly satisfying, well executed, and definitely worth checking out.