Fights in Tight Spaces is a single-player, turn-based, deckbuilding roguelite based on the moment-to-moment decision making in Fight Scenes. You and your enemies are represented on a small square grid, and possible actions you can take are represented by a hand of cards. With those cards, you must outplay and outwit your opponents to be the last one standing.
In a world where espionage consists mainly of analysts poring over data packets, Section Eleven's role is to find more direct solutions, taking on criminal organizations that fall beyond electronic communication. You are one such agent, tasked with taking a hands-on approach to keeping the peace, via smashing your fist into people's faces and people's faces into other things.
The game was developed by British studio Ground Shatter, published by Mode 7 Games, and released on Steam in Early Access on February 24, 2021, with the full release happening on December 2 that year.
A DLC, Weapon of Choice was announced in August, 2023 and released on September 28, 2023. Features include Gun Fu, Endless Mode, more enemies, another enemy faction, and another Agent 11.
On March 21, 2024, a sequel, Knights in Tight Spaces was announced.
Fights in Tight Spaces contains examples of:
- Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: The costs of medical and gym services rise sharply with each subsequent purchase you make in that location. Thankfully, this is only per location, so you'll always have an opportunity to purchase something each time you enter a new location.
- All Bikers are Hells Angels: The first organization you face is the Death's Head biker gang. Their boss is a bearded fellow wearing a vest. Justified in that they're a resurgence of the Nordic Biker Gang wars of the 90's which actually did involve the Hell's Angels.
- All the Worlds Are a Stage: In the beta final mission, and the released game's daily missions, all the organizations you've defeated previously team up, so encounters can consist of any enemies previously encountered and at any location previously visited.
- Anti-Frustration Features: Enemies with melee attacks that can reach further than one tile will generally try to position themselves as far from you as possible while still leaving you in attack range, and enemies with projectile attacks will similarly keep their distance and will often put a low wall between themselves and you. However, after you deal with all the close-range melee enemies, ranged enemies will start to close in on you so you aren't stuck spending turns continuously closing the distance on an enemy that keeps trying to run away.
- Arbitrary Mission Restriction: Each fight has several optional objectives to complete, e.g. finish in a certain number of turns or defeat enemies in a particular way. Completing them earns a variety of rewards like money or stat enhancements.
- Ass Kicking Pose: Several enemies will announce their arrival with one of these. Agent 11, meanwhile, performs such poses when using buff cards, such as cracking their neck or raising their knee and doing a bit of shadowboxing.
- Badass in a Nice Suit: Agent 11 - as you would expect from an obvious James Bond Expy.
- Bar Brawl: One of the locations you fight in is a bar. The final battle of the Death's Head Bikers will usually be in one.
- Bathroom Brawl: You'll often find yourself brawling in a bathroom.
- Bottomless Magazines: In play for everybody using a gun, naturally. The Agent can subvert this, however, by using the Reload card (to draw more pistol cards), while the Empty Magazine card will make them toss their gun to the ground.
- Bring It: The Taunt card will make Agent 11 beckon the enemy with their hand.
- Cardboard Prison: At the end of the standard game, all the bosses get put in a single cell together, with Agent 11 questioning the logic of having them locked up together. Come the DLC campaign, all of them break out of jail, forcing you to kick their asses again... and then they get locked up together in the same cell anyway, suggesting that they'll be able to break out a second time.
- Chef of Iron: The Insiders chefs are pretty tough, too heavy to down, and make a triple attack with their cleaver. They will also heal themselves and their allies with food from time to time.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Agent 11 and their handler are black as are the rogue Section Eleven agents, the British Ambassador is yellow, Death's Head mooks are red, Insider mooks are orange, Jade Staff mooks are green, I Completi mooks are purple, and the Assassins are brown.
- Combat Pragmatist: Agent 11 is willing to use things like stun darts, flash powder, and the environment itself to gain a leg up on their opponents. With the Weapon of Choice DLC, they can also simply bring a gun to a fist fight, and pull off tricks such as grabbing the target and shooting them in the gut.
- Combat Stilettos: The feminine variants of the Agent 11 wear heels, and are just as deadly.
- Continuing is Painful: You can choose to start on a later mission if you want, but the game warns you that without amassed upgrades from previous missions, things will be considerably more difficult.
- Contractual Boss Immunity: Averted for the most part, bosses are vulnerable to any move up until the i Completi boss who cannot be pushed. While both Agent XI and the Assassin Boss cannot be pushed either the Assassin Boss in particular instantly recovers from attacks that down her.
- Counter-Attack: Some cards let you hit your enemies back if they hit you. The Counter Striker deck is built around these types of cards. Some enemies also have counter-attacks, which can make them an absolute bastard to fight - although it also leads to hilarious displays if you can abuse movement and redirection so that they end up counter-attacking impacts from their own side.
- Damage Over Time: Some cards and enemies inflict a bleeding status effect, which causes those afflicted to lose health each turn. The Slasher deck centers around using bleed cards.
- Deadly Doctor: The Insiders doctors will stab you with a syringe, inflicting bleeding. They can also remove your combo by dropping their syringe and stomping on it.
- Deadly Dodging: Attacks that target multiple tiles affect the first character they reach, allowing Agent 11 to Set a Mook to Kill a Mook by simply stepping out of the way and letting someone else take the hit. There's also the Shimmy card, a specific action that allows Agent 11 to move 1-2 spaces in any direction, while any enemies that were targeting their position trigger their attacks (in addition to attacking on their own turn). Dodging a ranged attack will also cause it to continue onward, possibly resulting in an enemy shooting one of their own. This can also play to the disadvantage of enemies with dodges, if you're using a ranged attack to target whoever's behind them.
- Deadpan Snarker: Starting with the Insiders level, Agent 11 starts making witty comments about the next mission to their boss. It only comes up in the section openers, although the Taunt card does imply some use of it in combat too.Agent 11: (on being sent on an undercover mission into prison) I'm afraid orange isn't my colour.
- Devious Daggers: Agent 11, being a spy, uses a knife for their bleed-inducing attacks as well as some ranged ones.
- Dodge the Bullet: If the player's has a dodge active, Agent 11 avoids the bullet by ducking their head to the side in a Nonchalant Dodge.
- Doesn't Like Guns: While some mooks bring guns, the vanilla game's Agent 11 only uses thrown darts and knives for their ranged attacks. Weapon of Choice does let you use a gun, but the intro of the DLC campaign makes it obvious that Agent 11 is uncomfortable with using them.
- Dressed to Kill: Two variants of the Agent 11 wear a sharp suit while taking on enemies.
- Dual Boss: The final level of the DLC campaign will have you face Agent XI and the Assassin Boss at the same time, albeit with no other enemies present (with the exception of summoned minions).
- Easy Level Trick: Most boss arenas spawn with a ledge or exit in which the bosses can be thrown out of to instantly end the fight. It's considerably harder to pull off without a good amount of positioning cards, but it is far easier to do against the Jade Staff's boss, whose fight happens on top of a building. The i Completi boss is specifically immune to this, however.
- Elevator Action Sequence: Elevators occasionally pop up as a map in the i Completi chapter. As a 3x3 square, they're the tightest space in the entire game, forcing you to adapt your tactics to it.
- The End... Or Is It?: The standard game ends with all of the organization leaders in jail... but the last line has one of them saying "(...and so it begins)". The DLC campaign, meanwhile, ends similarly, but has one of them say "(Now we have all the information we need".
- Evil Counterpart: In the full release, the final boss is Agent 11's corrupt predecessor, Agent XI.
- Exactly What I Aimed At: A variant applies with the Near-Miss card, which makes you miss the first target (who will be stunned despite being unharmed), but allows you to hit whoever's behind them.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: You fist-fight enemies in claustrophobic spaces, as the title suggests.
- Excuse Plot: There are criminal organizations up to no good and it's up to you to take them out. You don't even see the investigations and spywork beyond brief allusions in random events, the game just goes from one Fight Scene to another.
- Fight Like a Card Player: The various actions you can take are represented as cards.
- Final-Exam Boss: The base game's final boss is a variation. While it doesn't strictly have distinct "phases", the boss's abilities change every turn, unlike every other enemy you've faced. Combining this with the high-level mooks that accompany them, which themselves have elite versions of gimmicks seen elsewhere in the game, means that beating the boss requires you to be familiar with practically every mechanic seen so far and how to deal with them.
- Finger Poke of Doom: Bruce Lee's famous one-inch punch is one of the available cards, with Agent 11 stopping their hand within one inch of the enemy, then suddenly punching them for a huge amount of damage.
- Fright Deathtrap: The version of the Warning Shot used by the Assassin Boss will cause you to take damage, possibly resulting in Agent 11 dying from sheer intimidation.
- Gathering Steam:
- The basis of the combo mechanic, which raises by one each time you land a blow and goes down when you move. Some cards are more effective at high combo levels, and some require a certain combo level to be useable at all.
- The Rising Strength card gives additional damage modifier every turn for 5 turns. The "Increased Strength" enhancement on the other hand gives +2 damage modifier every 3 turns starting off with the second turn.
- On the enemy side, the basic Prisoner mooks of the Insiders gain 1 damage every turn they're on the board. While their base damage of 10 is a modest figure, leaving them alone for too long can lead to getting overwhelmed with damage you can't feasibly block.
- For another villainous example there's the Assassins in the Weapons of Choice DLC, who gain extra effects with every Mission:
- The Cutthroat initially starts off improving other enemies' damage, but then he eventually starts to dodge an attack every turn and his attacks get deadlier.
- The Gas Mask Assassin doesn't start off with anything special other than gaining a bit of block every turn but eventually he prevents enemies from damaging each other (unless they are damaging him), gains Advance and a repositioning move each turn and gets a melee Counter that pushes the attacker away.
- Good Old Fisticuffs: While Agent 11 and a few mooks and bosses use complicated moves, most enemies will stick to bog-standard brawling. That makes them no less dangerous, however.
- Gratuitous Ninja: The entire point of the Jade Staff.Handler: I wasn't expecting to say this, but Berlin has a bit of a ninja problem.
Agent 11: Don't we all? - Gun Fu: Weapon of Choice lets you engage in this with gusto, as drawing a gun still allows you to use any of your melee cards.
- Hand Cannon: Section 11 appears to prefer the Desert Eagle as it's standard handgun, as it's used by Agent 11, their boss, And Agent XI's mooks.
- Heavily Armored Mook: Certain enemies can simulate this trope by passively generating block to mitigate damage, and some mini-bosses will retain block they've built up between turns. The best way to eliminate these foes is by Ring Out.
- Institutional Apparel: The Insiders are a prison gang, their mooks mainly wear jumpsuits, and appropriately their faction color is orange.
- Intimidation Demonstration: The Warning Shot card will make you to fire off in the air, causing the targeted enemy to be stunned. The Assassin Boss can also do it to you, but it causes you to take damage instead.
- I Shall Taunt You: The "Taunt" card forces any enemy in the battle to use their attack immediately, likely hurting their friends. The "Get Over Here" card, meanwhile, compels an enemy to take two steps towards you, which can lure them into the attack zones of other goons.
- Jack of All Stats: Your starting deck is a balanced one that mixes offense and defense together.
- Keystone Army: On a boss mission at the end of an act, the second the boss dies, all the action stops, any remaining queued attacks are aborted, and the player instantly wins, no matter how many other enemies are surrounding them seemingly ready to beat them up. This even applies if the boss merely bled out passively.
- Kung Fu-Proof Mook: Minibosses are often immune to being Downed, and there's a Jade Staff miniboss who is also immune to friendly attacks, making redirection less useful against him.
- Lawman Gone Bad: The Assassin Boss was a GIGN operative before she eventually switched sides and became a criminal.
- The Mafia: The Section Eleven boss says that i Completi is a modern take on the Mafia structure and responsible for most of the crimes in the Mediterranean area. Their mission can have you fighting in spaces like suites, sun decks, and hotel rooms.
- Marathon Boss: Downplayed. The full release's final mission is a long fight with Agent XI/Assassin Boss and their henchmen aboard their airplane/ship, and each of the levels has you fighting the boss as well. You can rest between scenes, but you have to conserve Agent 11's health as well.
- Mini-Boss: Each gang has two unique enemies besides their boss that you'll need to fight at thresholds, who have high HP and gimmicks that make them tougher than regular henchmen.
- Near Misses: Can be invoked with the Near Miss card, which will stun the first enemy in your line of fire, and then hit whoever's behind them.
- Never Bring a Gun to a Knife Fight: Some enemies come to the fight armed with guns, but in the tight confines and crowded melees of the game's arenas, Agent 11 can avoid giving them a clear shot, close the distance for a beat-down, or exploit their relatively high damage to take out other henchmen.
- Never Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight: The Weapon of Choice DLC gives you the ability to use a gun. Nothing prevents you from simply gunning down the mostly-melee mooks, although the small size of the locations means that it's not a guaranteed win.
- No Sympathy Between Mooks: Set a Mook to Kill a Mook applies to all enemies, leading to cases where minions can wind up stabbing or shooting their own lieutenants or boss, just because they were shoved in front of the minions' path.
- Parrying Bullets: If the player's block is high enough, Agent 11 can block bullets and thrown knives by catching them on their bare forearm. That said, bullets do high enough damage that it's unlikely the player can fully block multiple attacks this way.
- Pistol-Whipping: Having your gun drawn doesn't alter the animations of the melee cards, possibly resulting in you hitting enemies with it. The assassins also use this, as the Boss and upgraded Gas Masker will strike with their guns as a melee counter.
- Prison: The second mission has you infiltrating a correctional facility to dismantle a powerful prison gang.
- Protection Mission: Sometimes, there is a friendly target that you have to protect, usually the British Ambassador. While it's not always required, accomplishing the task can get you an edge in the future.
- Punched Across the Room: Attacks that cause knockback will occasionally have that effects upon killing an enemy, causing them to fly ridiculous distances.
- Purely Aesthetic Gender: You can choose one of three characters to represent Agent 11, and the game remains the same either way.
- Pushy Mooks: Inevitable, with the game's emphasis on careful positioning. The Biker attacks with an advancing kick, the Bouncer has a shove that can auto-trigger on Agent 11's turn, and the Mystical Ninja has a ranged shove.
- Railing Kill: Some level edges are guarded by railings, making it impossible to tackle or suplex enemies off the edge, but any other push attack will push them over the railing to their doom, in classical fashion. The player can even use a basic sideways shove to flip them over and out.
- A Rare Sentence: Even Agent 11's boss is surprised to have to tell you that Berlin has a ninja problem.
- Recurring Boss: The Assassin lieutenants will constantly reappear in the DLC campagin, getting stronger with each time. Agent 11 will eventually start making fun of them for being so persistent.
- Ring Out: If someone gets pushed out of the level, they're done. Makes sense when you're throwing them off prison walkways or onto subway tracks. Makes a bit less sense when you shove someone out of a public restroom and they pass out rather than just coming back in again.
- Samurai Shinobi: The Jade Staff faction's enemies are all labelled as some flavor of Ninja, but the Armored Ninja, Armored Swordsman and Jade Staff Boss take more design cues from samurai than from ninja. All of them are opportunistic assassins, though.
- Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: Your enemies are capable of hurting each other with both regular attacks and counters. With clever planning, you can win a battle while throwing only a few of your own blows. Cards that reposition you and/or your enemies like Dodge, Redirect, Grapple, Push and Shove are particularly useful for it, especially when upgraded (since an upgraded Grapple or Redirect costs no momentum to use).
- Shield-Bearing Mook: A couple of enemies have the special property that they can't be damaged from the front - necessitating that the player move around them and attack from the sides or rear, or throw them onto the floor instead.
- Shout-Out:
- The Discombobulate card, consisting of a double clap to the ears, is a clear reference to the pit-fighting scene of Sherlock Holmes (2009). It even grants you a rewind when used, alluding to Sherlock's Awesomeness by Analysis.
- The Spartan Kick card is based on the memetic "THIS IS SPARTA!" scene from 300, with its card depicting Agent 11 kicking a mook down a well.
- Simultaneous Warning and Action: Can be done by the player by using the Warning Shot card before (or even after) immediately ventilating them with gunfire. The Assassin Boss, meanwhile, uses this attack only after spending several turns trying to gun you down.
- Situational Damage Attack: Certain moves can deal lots of damage, but require specific circumstances in order to use. For example, Head Smash requires your target to be next to a wall or an object, and Wall Jump Punch requires you to be between a wall and your target.
- Splash of Color: The game environment is entirely colorless and has only minimal texturing, while the silhouettes of characters are a bright, solid color, save for some selective detailing in white (like the undershirt of Agent 11's nice suit). A character getting hit will also produce bright red blood.
- Tattooed Crook: The Insiders have the Brawler and the Tattoo Guy, with the former even having a facial tattoo of a skull.
- Three-Strike Combo: One attack is three punches delivered in quick succession, and another delivers two punches and a kick. Also, most decks start with three Momentum per turn, and pretty much all the attack cards in the Balanced starter use only one Momentum, so you can chain, say, Quick Strike, Quick Kick/Front Kick and Long Strike/Hammerfist into a three-hit sequence that also pushes the enemy away.
- Throw-Away Guns: The Empty Magazine card will cause the Agent to throw their gun to the floor after spending all the ammo in it. Nothing prevents you from immediately drawing another gun afterwards.
- Throwing Your Gun at the Enemy: The Throw Gun card. As it's damage depends on how much Combo you have accumulated, it's possible for throwing the gun to be more dangerous than shooting it.
- Time Rewind Mechanic: Depending on the difficulty, you get a number of rewinds per each fight, allowing you to go back to the start of the current turn. The Discombobulate card will also grant you an extra rewind.
- Unexplained Recovery: All of the bosses will survive fighting you to be jailed, even if you threw them off a roof. It gets particularly noticeable with the Assassins, who keep coming back for another fight.
- Unfriendly Fire: Although informants are forced to attack you to keep their cover intact, you can exploit the Deadly Dodging mechanics in order to allow them to attack their "buddies".
- Use Your Head: The Tattoo Guy and the Insiders boss rely on headbutts, the latter's being described as "A brutal knocking of heads". The player can also get in on the action with the Headbutt card, which deals combo-dependent damage and stuns the target if they lose health from it.
- We Need a Distraction: The i Completi will pull this on you, as their bartenders will weaken you with distracting bartending tricks. You can also use the Distraction enhancement, which reduces damage received.
- A Winner Is You: Complete the final mission, and you're treated to a scene where the leaders of the organizations you've felled are in prison, while the Section Eleven boss congratulates you on your work.
- With My Hands Tied: The boss of the Insiders fights with his hands chained in front. It doesn't really restrain him, as he relies solely on headbutts.
- Wrestler in All of Us: Among the various throw cards you have the Suplex (a German Suplex, to be specific) and the Chokeslam.
