Knights in Tight Spaces is a deck-building roguelike with the heart of an RPG and the soul of an action film. It’s the follow-up to Fights in Tight Spaces, but where that game had you basically playing as John Wick, here you’re thrust back into ye olde times of a magic-filled fantasy world. Think more D&D, basically.
You choose your class at the start of each run, with there being a range on offer covering all of the classic archetypes like warrior, mages, and a brawler. You then start the run, and you get a slightly different story each time, with trouble inevitably finding you, and you then needing to figure out how to deal with that trouble. The story side of this is a lot of fun, and you get some cool moments where you get to navigate conversations that can not only lead to different rewards, but also potentially side quests to undertake as well.
It means that you get to feel like an actual character, and not just someone playing a deck-building game. It’s a nice touch of character that goes a long way, and makes the losses hit a little bit harder too. You’re not alone in this one though, as you’ll end up picking up a party as you play through the game. This gives you access to new cards, and adds extra layers to the strategy of the game because you need to think about more people avoiding attacks, along with having more angles to attack from.
Speaking of attacks, let’s go through the combat. You get a set amount of energy each turn to play cards with. Cards can have a lot of different effects. Some just do damage, sure, but a lot of them help you move around, block, move enemies around, disable them, or have other special effects. Battles are incredibly tactical, because you can not only just defeat enemies with damage, but have them hit each other, combo with your party members, or just kick enemies out of the map.
Enemies come in a lot of different varieties too, so you’ll be juggling a lot of information about how best to proceed at any given time. It’s a hard game, sure, but you always feel as though you could have played it a little smarter at some point to do better on the next run.
Also, it’s so darn pretty. There’s a lovely hand-drawn sketch look to all of the characters and an almost comic book styling to the environments. As you rotate the environments, you watch walls slide out of the way so you can see properly as well. It’s incredibly satisfying, and it’s also practical. It helps tie everything together into a package that’s just a lot of fun to play, even if it can be incredibly hard.
