Fights in Tight Spaces is a turn-based recreation of those moments in a spy movie or any kind of action movie, where the hero is suddenly surrounded in an enclosed area with no way out. Obviously, we can see how hard it is for our heroes through carefully choreographed fight scenes. They turn around, their arms and elbows are blurred, and all of a sudden, enemies punch and kick each other, looking confused, guns go off, someone is fighting with a towel for some reason, and then the scene ends in stillness with the hero in The corpses scattered around were triumphant. It’s textbook stuff.
In “Battle for Small Spaces,” you’re that hero, a well-dressed agent working for some James Bond-esque organization trying to destroy some criminal organization. And you have an impressive array of moves. You can jump off walls to attack, you can roll enemies while knocking them down, and you can slam your head into the landscape. You can even jump and kick enemies around you, which is something I always wanted to do, but I always kicked the TV.
What your agent can do depends on your deck, as this is a deck building game. There are a few ways to get around this: build your own, or choose a pre-made deck and add to it as you play, upgrade the cards or remove them as you see fit, stop along the way. You move around the map while stopping to fight, tinker with cards, heal, and risk random events. These pre-made decks are nice, by the way, built around themes like aggressiveness (it has wall punches) or cuts where the bleed debuff comes into play, which I really like. Crucially, these premade decks don’t leave you out in areas that really matter like movement and defense, because it’s not just attacking.
Combat in tight spaces is as easy to shake off damage as it is to damage enemies. You don’t have much health, it doesn’t regenerate between battles, and you only have one life (on most difficulty levels – there are some easier modes with level restart options). A good player will attack seriously while making sure they don’t get countered.
In many ways, it’s all about free squirming, as the game’s real conundrum comes from negotiating safety when surrounded by enemies in very “narrow spaces,” as the title says. As a claustrophobic thought: the smallest play area I’ve ever seen is a grid of 3×3 squares, I occupy one and two enemies occupy the other.
Fortunately, you have some creative ways to get yourself out of trouble. Yes, you have standard move cards that move one or two squares one way or the other, but better cards involve manipulating your enemies at the same time or the other way around. For example, Shift lets you pass behind enemies so they face the same direction, often ensuring you not only get out of danger, but now blind them for non-impact attacks. Or better yet, Grapple moves your enemies to adjacent squares around you and faces them in that direction, which is really handy if you just want to pick them up and do damage instead of you. That’s the real trick: give them trouble when you squirm freely.
Equally satisfying is directing them out of the border, whether through an open door or on the side of a building – there are almost always destructible borders on one level. Doing so results in instant kills, which means it’s useful when enemies become more powerful and when lieutenants and bosses appear. I once killed a boss in two steps – two front kicks – hooves them off the edge of the building, and since it’s a boss, the fight is over and my high score bonus (scores are for bragging rights only) As far as I know, but there are some additional monetary bonuses when certain requirements are met, one of which is completion speed).
But some enemies can’t be pushed away, and some will face you as you dance around them, sabotaging your plan to have them all face – and hit – away from you at the end of the turn. They will also increasingly gain their own special abilities. Reading these (by hovering your cursor over them) is the most important, as a lack of concentration can cost your entire run in a lap or two. puff! A stupid mistake sacrificed two hours of gameplay. I’ve done it many times and it really stings. Focus is everything here.
You can, however, skip directly to later levels on replay (the tutorial and fancy final stages book four proper levels), but doing so means you miss out on all the upgrades along the way. For the best chance of winning, you need to play right from the start. However, this becomes tiresome.
“What I’ve really found myself craving is another layer of attention, embellishment, and exuberance—something that adds to the joy of playing again and again.”
I don’t think there is anything that contributes to that feeling. First, running can take a long time, so undoing it all so quickly naturally leads to a lot of frustration, which is not easy to shake. It’s especially annoying when you’re losing, as there can be slight tweaks in the game, such as the ability to see (when you can’t currently) the turn order of enemies. When you’re dealing with Small Spaces Battle’s razor-thin margins, every detail counts.
Second, most levels are not that fun to play. They get better, but there’s a lot of repetition, and many of them feel robotic, as if you’re struggling to get somewhere through them, rather than enjoying them alone. When you try again, this creates a feeling of labor.
That’s not to say that going back in time isn’t fun, because even at the base level, Battle of Tiny Spaces is engrossing, and it’s always exciting to tackle battles quickly. But what I really found myself craving was another layer of attention, embellishment, exuberance—something that adds to the joy of playing again and again. For now, it can be very mechanical.
It’s a wonderful subject after all, espionage and hand-to-hand combat. So why is it so quiet when the enemy is fighting? They fought without bickering, and they won without the broker’s one-liners. Why aren’t there more props, whether it’s an agent gadget or a pickup on the level? The levels are just empty, quiet, and weird (though the final stage is more dazzling and does involve a lot of conversation).
I also wouldn’t mind turning these moves up a bit to make you feel more powerful, as well as the permanent enhancement buffs you collect. It’s as if everything needs to be injected with more: faster, more charismatic, more exaggerated. Even the accelerated replay, which you can watch at the end of a fight, feels a little tedious and a little bland.
Because of this, Battle of the Small Space itself struggles with a battle: convince you to play it again. It’s a key battleground because the core design of the game depends on it. It’s so close, so close. But for now, it’s kind of like a cake without frosting: perfectly edible and delightful, but probably not.
