Knights in Tight Spaces is a fantastic follow-up to a deck-building delight

Knights in Tight Spaces is a roguelike deck builder with deep strategy, lots to unlock and explore, and a whole lot of style. The game is a successor to the 2021 title Fights in Tight Spaces, but while the original game was a modern spy thriller with a tightly focused combat loop, Knights in Tight Spaces sprawls out onto a much broader canvas, telling an epic tale of brawlers, wizards, necromancy, medieval conspiracies, and frantic hand-to-hand combat. 

This is a sequel at its best: Knights has all the stuff I loved about Fights, but the developers at Ground Shatter seem far more confident in using the tools in their arsenal. Each battle takes place on a tight grid, and I have to carefully position my party, avoid dangers, pick up the occasional chest of loot, and ponder upon my strategy.

I begin each run with a single character, whom I can choose from a few options. There’s the brawler, an unarmed badass who tackles, grapples, choke slams, and smashes the skulls of their enemies against nearby terrain. The rogue is sneaky, capable of using a sword or a bow to sneak in, take quick hits, and then sidestep to safety. The sorcerer is a glass cannon, capable of enormous damage and mobility, but struggles in a prolonged fight. As I proceed through the campaign, I can eventually build a three-person party, making the map more crowded but providing more power.

I start off story mode as a brawler in a low-stakes bar fight, and this is how I’m introduced to Knights in Tight Spaces’ combat. Each level is a grid in some medieval location: a castle stairwell, a tavern, a drawbridge, or a scenic waterfall. I engage in turn-based combat with all manner of ruffians, robbers, and spooky skeletons. Each victory allows me to advance along the map to another level, picking new options for my deck or upgrading a particularly trusty card for future battles. 

Combat offers a big visual upgrade over Fights, which depicted its action in stark, monochromatic scenes of black, white, and red. Knights has more color and detail to its characters, and the maps are made to look like medieval scrolls. There are also some great animations; one that tickled me in particular was the rogue using a long strike to attack two squares away, where he fires his arrow into the air, leaps forward, catches the arrow, and plunges it into his enemy. 

There are a few exceptions to this great action. Occasionally, the camera will glitch, and my cool kill is obscured by a thatched roof or the shoulder of some random bandit. The projectile trajectory can look unclear, and I will have to rotate my map to make sure an archer won’t strike me. Switching party members can be a bit of a pain, as a click doesn’t always transfer control, and I have to prod a little to go from my rogue to my brawler. These are small hiccups, but noticeable in the heat of battle.

The greater map is a particularly interesting evolution from Fights. As with the first game, I am presented with a map with the occasional branching choice, allowing me to pick my fights — or take a moment to head to the tavern for some healing, pick up an upgrade at the blacksmith, and so on. At the end of each stage is a boss fight, and while I die early and often, even a failed run will offer new cards and sometimes even classes to experiment with.

I occasionally encounter fun surprises on the world map. A mercenary I declined to recruit shows up and demands to fight me. My sorcerer from a previous failed run shows up in the middle of a new attempt to impart some ominous advice and a sweet card upgrade. A raving hermit babbles about the mysteries I have yet to discover, suggesting an encounter that I’ll earn down the road. I lose my prized sorcerer, but a necromancer agrees to resurrect her. A merchant begs for help from a swarm of skeletons. The structure of each run is roughly the same, but random events keep me guessing.

There’s no shortage of excellent roguelike deck builders out there, from Slay the Spire to Balatro, but the terse action and fantasy flavor of Knights in Tight Spaces make it a standout among the competition. While the espionage fantasy of the first game was fun, it’s thrilling to behead a skeleton or fight a massive stone golem instead. 

Knights in Tight Spaces was released March 4 on Windows PC. The game was reviewed on PC using a code provided by Raw Fury. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.