Saturday Morning Gaming: Fights In Tight Spaces

Say what you will about the Marvel Movie Universe but one of the good things it’s done is given us some *AWESOME* fight scenes. Here’s one of the best ones from Captain America: The Winter Soldier:

Okay. One guy against 10 guys. That was pretty awesome.

So awesome that you might say “I’d like to play a video game where you do that sort of thing.” Well, I’ve got some good news. Fights in Tight Spaces provides the experience of one guy against many in, yes, a tight space.

It’s a deck builder at heart. You get a deck of cards that includes stuff like dash, block, counter, quick kick, long strike, and many others. And then you have to fight a bunch of bad, bad dudes (and chicks!) and get out of the proverbial elevator. Now it’s not 10-on-1 to start. More like 3-on-1. But that’s interesting enough when you’re just getting started. Here, I played the first part on Twitch last night. Check it out.

When starting the game, it asks you how you present yourself:

You pick and the game gives you a short description of your mission:

And then you’re thrown into it with the various scumbags that you have to beat up. Now, here’s the neat trick: each enemy is going to do a particular thing… like, if they’re going to move, they’re going to move. But if they’re going to punch, then they’re going to punch.

What this means is that you can position your enemies to beat up each other.

And *THAT* is where the game gets fascinating. You can make these guys beat up (or worse) each other. You have enough situational awareness to turn this from a “I have to beat all of these people up!” game into a “Eh, I just have to mostly beat them up” game. Now, sometimes you’ll be dealt a hand with nothing but movement when you want attack cards (or vice-versa) but, for the most part, you’ll get the right hand to get you to the next turn where, presumably, you’ll be able to end this fight decisively.

There are various dynamics… you only have 3 (air quotes) mana (air quotes) to play each turn. A punch costs one, a kick costs one, and so on. But some moves require “momentum”. Finishers, for example. Instead of doing X damage, these cards do 2X damage (sometimes 3X damage). But if you don’t have momentum: you can’t play them. Do interesting things, move to the right spot and then end the fight. Or, at least, take out this one main guy who has, seriously, been a thorn in your side.

So you can kick your opponents into each other (or into the environment), you can move them out of the arena, you can swoop around and switch places and position yourself to make the next move awesome… and you realize that this is a *PUZZLE* game rather than a fighting game.

And if you have been dreaming about a fighting game that was just like the elevator fight, you close the game in disgust but if you have been dreaming about a puzzle game that was just like the elevator fight… well, I’ve got some good news. That game is here.

It’s Fights in Tight Spaces. And it was made just for you.

So… what are you playing?