Knights in Tight Spaces, developed by Ground Shatter, is a fantasy twist on their previous title, Fights in Tight Spaces. It iterates on the turn-based tactics deckbuilding roguelike, retaining the focus on positioning and movement mechanics to mostly great success. While some tactics games relish in random chance, mechanically, Knights in Tight Spaces has more in common with Into The Breach than XCOM. The lack of hit percentages or variable damage numbers creates a distinct ‘combat as puzzle’ feeling. As you know exactly how enemies intend to act on their turn, you can always plan accordingly. As the name implies, combat arenas are also small, meaning the difference between a threatened position and a comfortable one is very slight.

First: distract target

The small scale places a premium on smart positioning and clever tactics, but with this level of information transparency, failures and successes in Knights in Tight Spaces are firmly in your hands (pun intended). On a turn, your cards define your options, so you can’t always rely on your tried and true strategies. This forces you to adapt when the cards don’t line up and improvise new methods of dispatching your foes. Initially, I sometimes felt like I was being hamstrung by a bad hand. As I improved, however, I realised there are always more options than it seemed at first.

Knights in Tight Spaces has extremely tightly tuned combat. Enemy design incentivises careful planning, with high damage and even instant death as the risk of a poorly thought-out approach. To balance that, almost every card feels useful, and you’ll quickly find powerful synergies within your run. Despite you almost always being heavily outnumbered, smart tactics help you dispatch enemies quickly and turn the tide of battle.

As you progress, both your deck and your party expand, giving you extensive options in any situation. Initially, a full party of three required quite a lot of mental energy to utilise properly. However, you’ll need allies to successfully build combos, take advantage of differing abilities, and survive the expanding roster of enemies who all require and open up different strategic options. Given foes’ telegraph attacks, and the risk of friendly fire, each enemy type is both a combatant and an opportunity. Knowing enemy abilities is key, especially when a diverse range of foes can rapidly ruin your best-laid plans. 

I will say that later in the runs, certain enemies become so complex that your entire turn can be absorbed by dealing with one particularly troublesome auto-attacking, following, poisoning, pushing creature—with great risk if you don’t.

Venture forth

Concerning the actual story, I won’t mince words: it isn’t great. The bar for rogue-like narratives has been thoroughly raised, though Knights in Tight Spaces would struggle even before games like Hades redefined what is possible in the genre. An endless mode is available that also removes the overworld portion, and a daily challenge mode, but this story is the main mode.

The problem is that the experience has both a tacked-on and overly prevalent narrative. Each attempt subjects you to the same annoying dialogue with a main character who is deeply unfunny, with only minor choices influencing the rewards granted. This dialogue changes slightly based on character class but by and large you are skipping through it over and over again solely to pick your rewards.

The other hallmark of this story mode is that the fights you engage in feel largely static. While the game claims procedural generation, the limited maps and early enemy types mean they can blend into one another. While more visible randomness would be nice, thankfully the battles rarely play out the same way once they begin. But this isn’t really what Knights in Tight Spaces is focused on.

When you enter a proper flow state, fights become a carefully choreographed dance. Knowing when to exploit an enemy’s attack with a dodge so they hit an ally, when to reposition, or when to kick people off the board all become second nature. To succeed you need to feel the rhythm of the battle and force the enemies to move to your beat.

Form and function

The heavily stylised papercraft aesthetic may not be for everyone, but I personally enjoyed the distinctive look. The way the walls fold into the ground to show off these intimate battles is unlike anything else. It isn’t all good news, however. Some animations aren’t as smooth as they could be, and the slow-motion effect that ends fights often causes an odd stretchy enemy corpse. Additionally, certain player characters were sometimes difficult to distinguish, so it would be good to be able to set their colours. Despite these issues, the overall sense of style mostly carries it over the line visually.

Playing across both a high-end PC and a handheld, Knights in Tight Spaces felt right at home on the handheld. On both machines, it had strong performance and very few bugs. I did experience a few crashes, but with constant autosaving, this was never more than a minor inconvenience. 

Fights in Tight Spaces was compared to John Wick, but Knights’ fantasy riff reminded me of the action in the criminally underrated Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Among Thieves. The kinetic violence is inspired by modern fight sequences, but the fantasy setting adds a pizzazz that makes Knights unique.

The genre salad that opened this review may all be familiar flavours, but the spin(kick) on the moment-to-moment gameplay wormed its way into my brain despite some shortcomings. If you love perfectly dispatching a room of enemies without taking a punch, few games fulfil that fantasy as frequently and thoroughly as Knights in Tight Spaces.