It’s party time.
I liked Fights in Tight Spaces.
It mashed together two things I’m fond of: Roguelike deck-builders and badass secret agents.
I stepped around their punches and redirected them back at them.
I slammed their heads into walls and tables.
I dodged bullets -whoa.I even booted people off the wings of aeroplanes.
I survived insurmountable odds.
FITS did what it promised and fulfilled my hand-to-hand spy-fight fantasy.
But where does the series go from here?
Underneath, though, the core is more or less the same.
And it’s not just a reskin.
KITS has changed the formula in ways that make a surprising difference.
There are a few elements to this.
The first is you now choose from a variety of characters to play as.
- it’s a familiar fantasy spread.
Who you are changes what you do in combat.
But the archer who joins my team later plays differently.
They do their best work at range, so working with them involves keeping distance on the battlefield.
It’s a nice way to give clusters of new considerations to think about.
Allies bulk decks out.
Furthermore, what an archer can do will obviously differ from what a brawler can do.
Mix a third character into that and the likelihood of a useless hand increases.
Building this complexity further is the rule that all characters share the same energy pool.
You won’t be able to individually go through each of them and move and fight.
You’ll need to prioritise, usually depending on who’s in the most immediate danger.
What it means is your considerations have multiplied by the number of characters you have on the board.
Are they all safe from being hit at the end of the round?
Who’s in the best position to do the most damage?
Do you have the right cards available to do what you want to do?
The focus becomes a group one.
And the key to mastering it is, of course, synergy.
At the heart of it all is the game’s new ally attack.
Therefore, it’s a prime consideration.
It also taps into what makes this series so satisfying to play in the first place: tactical smugness.
It’s looking at a seemingly impossible situation and seeing the move that makes it possible.
It’s a bit like nailing that killer move in a chess game that all the audience gasps at.
It feels like that.
Outside of combat, the fantasy RPG focus has a sizable impact too.
I like this because it means you never miss out on potentially juicy loot from elsewhere.
Speaking of which: you might now equip characters.
Again, it’s more to think about - many more pleasing mini-puzzles to serve the larger whole.
But what worries me slightly is bloat.
I worry the extra systems might loosen the tight focus that Fights in Tight Spaces appropriately had.
This piece is based on a trip to Raw Fury’s HQ in Stockholm.
Raw Fury paid for travel and accommodation.
