fights in tight spaces does a very good (or at least interesting?) job of translating the mechanics of cinematic fighting into the Digital Realm, but fails at capturing the emotional satisfaction which makes such fighting so captivating. it's no surprise that video games like this & sifu would try to recreate john wick style shit, just look at how many other movies are ripping it off right now. the problem is, how do you translate thousands of hours of training and careful choreography designed to look effortlessly skilled into something that a player without any training or choreography can immediately pick up on? the approach here is to break it down into turns, each punch and kick and grapple is an individual card you can deploy and you're unbound by the temporal realm, so you've essentially replaced instinct with unlimited time to think. this is a very solid approach and it works well in a lot of places, especially in the early game where the difficulty is reasonable and you have some freedom to experiment with your approach. this is far from the first game to try something like this (i mean, even xcom basically does this stuff), but it's the first i've played to use it as a means of expressing cinematic combat, and for that i do think it's a worthwhile experiment.

the game fails in two big ways however - for one, and as many others have pointed out, the difficulty curve is just insane. by the second or third stage you're being bombarded with overwhelming numbers of enemies in incredibly crowded spaces which all have varied attacks that you simply can't deal with. i'm sure some of this is due to my own lack of skill, but i'm seeing similar complaints from steam reviewers with hundreds of hours so idk lol.
this is such a big problem for me because of the second big way this game fails - this difficulty curve brings out the inherent problems in using roguelike mechanics to represent this type of fighting. you ultimately are beholden to the luck of the draw, and if you get into a particularly dicey situation, you can very easily find yourself in a situation where you know exactly what moves are necessary to win the fight but simply do not have access to them. that's pretty normal for roguelikes, but it feels very bad when i'm supposed to be a rama style badass!! there's a tangible difference between dying and having to restart at a checkpoint in an action game because you took a bad punch vs. losing a roguelike because you made a bad decision an hour and a half ago, and it is a difference which does not lend itself well to a genre full of instinct and prowess and that Effortlessness i mentioned earlier. so yeah give this one a try maybe but play something else if you're looking for the Sick Movie Kung Fu In Gaming which i described above

A turn based deck building strategy game where you take control of an agent fighting against a variety of gangs, syndicates, and mystical ninja clans in small areas. The game plays through each gang in order, rising in challenge as you go, where each successful fight allows you to gain new random cards to add to your deck or to ignore and the possibility of getting upgrades and money for completing bonus objectives on each map. You choose a path on an overworld map that can have you choosing what locations you want to fight at, stopping at a place to heal or recover injuries, stopping at a gym to upgrade, remove, or buy new cards, or stopping on event cards that allow you to choose different possible outcomes for bonuses or the chance of bonuses. Completing each section of the game gives you a choice between three passive enchantments that can give you powerful bonuses such as extra card draw or more of the momentum points you gain each turn to pay for some of your abilities.

Cards are played either for free, by spending the momentum you gain on each turn, or by either spending or having a high enough combo level that is gained from continued use of attacks without either moving to lower your combo or using a type of cards that spends your combo. You can use movement or grappling cards to move around enemies possibly to reposition them into each others attacks, blocks/dodges/counters, melee weapons that cause bleed damage over time, throws and stuns that can disable an enemy for a turn, the stage environment can be used to damage or kill enemies, etc. Enemies will have different types of attacks that work at different ranges, damage stats, and damage amounts. Passive enemy skills might have them auto attacking when something moves into their range, countering attacks, generating block, ignoring your defense, adding injury cards to your deck, etc.

A good variety of difficulty settings are offered and there are six starter decks that set you on a path closer to certain playstyles. A balanced deck with different skills, one focused on counter attacks, one focused on bleeding weapons, one focused on throws, one more focused on powerful attacks and augmenting them, and one with abilities that can give some more unusual side effects. There is also an option to draft random cards. Missions themselves can offer some variety by having missions where you need to protect a target or try to keep an informant alive that is attacking you with the rest of the enemies in order to complete bonus objectives.

The game is fun to play and gives you a decent variety of options in the way of cards. The downsides come from not having starter deck options as varied as you might like (none that focus more on multi hit attacks with damage boosts, deck manipulation, combo builds and skills, or stun and follow up attacks) and that you are playing through a fairly repetitive set of stages where each type of gang chapters includes the same types of enemies and locations. A more randomized mode outside of the story that gives more of a mix of stages, enemies, and even combining enemy bosses or unique lieutenants. Drafting a deck is a nice option but it needed a way to either focus things more or to use more of a point buy system as it becomes so random that it's difficult to get anything you would really want, and you could just keep restarting for different options. Some cards that become available over time are so comparatively useless against other options or so heavily dependent on having other cards in your deck (not even getting into happening to draw them together with them both available for use if acquired) that customization options are further limited.

There is a random daily play event that is more like a mode that plays like the main game while combining everything but that tends to force= you into drafting a deck with likely unwanted or barely relevant side passive effects occurring while giving you less options to advance as you play.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1560525836100325376

Video: https://youtu.be/UlSpEocljD0

Entre tanto juego de cartas, encontrar una propuesta así de fresca es una maravilla.

Pros:
- No para de añadir mecánicas nuevas a lo largo de toda la campaña.
- Tiene una duración perfecta si tu intención es jugarlo solo una vez. Si la intención es hacerse varias runs, estas pueden hacerse demasiado largas.
- Pocas cosas hay en esta vida más satisfactorias que ganar un combate provocando que los enemigos se maten entre ellos.

Contras:
- Las opciones de personalización del mazo acaban siendo bastante limitadas.
- Aunque es posible realizar varias sinergias entre cartas, no son muy numerosas y suelen estar muy limitadas por los escenarios.
- Su estilo artístico, especialmente en los escenarios, sigue un estilo DEMASIADO minimalista. Pasa de ser minimalismo a que directamente no tengan ni chicha ni limoná.

A decent core system is let down in a few key ways, and I'm starting to feel like a broken record with these entries.

This is not a review I'm going to put any finesse into (which I suppose is a bit ironic, considering the game at hand). Here are the problems:
- Horribly optimized & chugs battery on my Steam Deck. How is it even possible to get a deckbuilder to manage loading times this long? I also encounter semifrequent crashes (which are reduced by unlocking my deck's framerate).

- While enemy moves and modifiers are (largely) communicated well, only the most token of efforts is put into ensuring these are actually readable at a glance. I am continually having to hover over each new enemy to remind myself how they work. Some enemy behaviors (like push) are not communicated at all, and some mechanics are underexplained, to be understood through a little trial an error. None of these are cardinal sins, especially when your first run includes a limited use turn-rewind feature, but they are all annoying.

- There is far too little variety in what your character can actually do, and as a result the gameplay can quickly become stale. The main saving grace here is that the game is at least hard, maybe excepting the first area.

I'm having enough fun and the fights are interesting, but I can tell my time with it is limited.

Pros:
+ fitting, clean art style
+ animations are fluid and stylish
+ camera never gets in the way of the action
+ enemies are easily distinguishable and color-coded
+ high level of enemy variety that demand a lot of attention
+ decks are balanced and offer wildly different approaches
+ shops offer a lot of options to improve your deck
+ most missions offer secondary objectives
+ the final level is smartly designed...

Cons:
- but also frustratingly difficult
- difficulty options are very unbalanced
- repeating missions or a turn is limited to only the easiest difficulties
- extra minion enemies can spawn indefinitely
- Bar Tender enemies in particular are far too tough
- runs always feel the same and take place in the same few rooms
- little variety between level architecture and level objectives
- some objectives like getting a suitcase are practically impossible
- card draws are not actually randomized but pre-rolled
- events are too rare and can make or break a run
- story is pratically non-existant

Playtime: 23 hours, four out of six decks unlocked, one playthrough on Classic Plus difficulty finished.

Magic Moment: Coming up with a distinct strategy that pushes an enemy off the screen for the first time.
Blagic Moment: Restarting a fight and realizing that the deck is literally pre-rolled and stacked against you.

Best Deck: Counter Deck. Hitting with counter attacks twice in a row is very satisfying
Best Card: Wall Jump Punch. Combine it with Steel Self to kill everything in one hit.

Verdict:
Fights in Tight Spaces is a good game that could have been great. With more variety in the level designs and objectives, more fluid difficulty options that let players decide if they want to repeat turns or entire missions, and a more involving story, this could have been a modern classic. While the distinguishing features like the smartly designed action, memorable art style, and heaps of combat options cannot be understated, Fights in Tight Spaces does not offer enough to really stand out in the deluge of contemporary roguelites.

Take a look at the demo to see if it's enough to hook you. Everyone else should probably skip this.

Un deckbuilder roguelike majísimo, muy vistoso y con mecánicas chulísimas. Tiene alguna cosilla que pulir, especialmente en la dificultad en las últimas fases, pero el conjunto es TAN divertido y funciona tan bien que no puedo reprochárselo.

Combina de maravilla el posicionamiento, la improvisación propia de un juego de cartas y la utilización de tu entorno para darte una serie de combates que, si bien no tienen excesiva variedad, nunca dejan de ser divertidos.

Ya era una joya durante Early Access y, ahora que ya está terminado, no puedo recomendarlo más.

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A fantastic roguelike deckbuilder, very flashy and with very cool mechanics. It has a few things here and there that could be a bit better, particularly in the last stages, but the package is SO fun and it works so well that I can't really complain.

Wonderfully combines positioning, the trademark improvisation of a card-based game and the usage of your environment to bring you a series of fights that, despite not being that varied, never stop being fun.

It was a gem during Early Access and, now that it's finished, I can't recommend it enough.

Played the demo, and I'm already very excited to see where this goes. Pretty effective tactical mastery here, with cards and grid based decisions working seamlessly, with wiggle room to really decimate with card combos and keep yourself damageless. Encounters are excellently tuned to where you have a healthy amount of options at any point and time, and the difficulty ramps up well AND you can pretty much destroy the final boss in mere seconds with just the regular deck alone if your strategy is up to snuff.

Is certainly a demo in most senses of the word though, has some rough patches in terms of cpu performance (weirdly, this shit should not be intensive at all?), metagaming in terms of choosing your routes and choosing when to go to shops and healing when currently they cost WAY more than it really should, and a couple balance quirks. Like that example I said, beating the final boss in like a couple turns. Some of these cards are too OP for their own good. Regardless it's absolutely excellent, and definitely worth a look by more people.