Little Fighters 2 was a hit digital indie game released in Hong Kong in the year 2000. It was remastered and re-released in 2025, marking its 25th anniversary. Along with the re-release of the game, a novel was published. The deluxe version of that novel comes with a small box card game. This review is about that small box card game.
This is a game designed for 2 to 4 players. You get to play as one of four characters from the original digital game. You will hold a hand of 13 cards. These cards correspond to one suit in a standard poker deck, meaning the numbers go from 2 all the way up to the Ace. The value of the card represents the strength of your move. Depending on which character you choose to play, some of your cards might have special abilities. For example, one ability might let you take back a card that was previously discarded.
Every round of the game, everyone plays a card from their hand at the same time. The player with the highest number on their card wins that round. However, if there are ties, meaning two or more people play the same high number, all of those tied players automatically lose the round. The winner of a round gets to place their winning card onto a 3 x 3 grid. You are essentially playing a game of tic-tac-toe on this grid. Whoever manages to make three of their cards in a row on the grid wins the entire game. If the grid gets filled up without anyone making three in a row, you can use your winning card to push out and replace a weaker card that is already sitting in the grid.
After reading the rules, I honestly thought the game looked rather simplistic. There didn’t seem to be anything particularly new or interesting about it. Only when I actually played the game did I find that it worked better than I expected. It is indeed a pretty simple game, but there are some meaningful tactical things to think about. I played a game with three players, and I think having 3 or 4 players will be more interesting than just 2. This is because it is possible for numbers to clash. For instance, when Han was leading, Xiu Yi and I wanted to stop him. We both played the same high number, and because we tied, we lost that round to Han. With three or four players, you can actually talk to each other and decide what numbers to play if you want to gang up on the player who is in the lead.
It is very important to count the cards that have been played. If you know that your opponents have already played all of their Aces, you can be confident that your Ace will certainly win the round. The four characters in the game are similar, but they are not exactly the same. When you understand their different personalities, you can adjust your style of play to match them. Overall, this is still a simple game. Fans of the original computer game will likely find this enjoyable. Sometimes, board games and card games based on intellectual property are made by people who don’t play games themselves, and these are painfully obvious to us gamers. Little Fighters 2 is made by gamers, so you get a package that not only honors the original game but is also a properly decent game on its own.
