Check out this speaker kit call C-Notes. They're really well rated and a pretty simple/budget friendly option, especially if you're okay applying some eq on them. Paul Carmody has many good designs.
"Small" and "decent audio response in bass" don't really go together. But you can go surprisingly far with a pair of "bookshelf" speakers.
With passive speakers, I agree, but with active/DSP speakers you can do ludicrous things. There's this build on diyaudio called something like "compact active 3 way", that'll give you an idea of how decently powerful a small speaker can go (and that's despite some design flaws in the build like the choice of a passive radiator).
Check out Hexabase on YT. He has really punchy small speakers that he has released designs for.