It has been a real pleasure over the last several years watching Blackoath move from genre to genre while refining their solo RPG rules. Across a Thousand Dead Worlds (2023) suffered from some delays, but now that it is in-hand, I can tell you for sure that it was worth the wait (and, is also usable as a group game!). This is the fancy-pants edition, which contains the rulebook, a rules reference, tokens, hex maps and a folio of character sheets in a black slipcase. It’s nice.

What’s the game about? It’s the future, and capitalism has ruined the entirety of the solar system, except Mars, where rich assholes live. A while back, some alien ships were found in the Main Asteroid Belt and Karum Station was built to investigate them. The ships are full of pre-programmed coordinates to distant sites — players take the roll of Deep Divers, who plan and execute expeditions to those sites to recover…whatever they can. As you might imagine, it’s a dark and dangerous biz.

System is simple — for most stuff, you roll a D20, add an attribute value, and succeed if the sum is about 20. Characters have primary and secondary attributes, skills, and talents that all work together in play. There are non-mechanical drives, mannerisms and nervous tic that flesh out characters and provide insight into how the stress mechanic might affect them — there is an emotion matrix that tracks their state of mind. Combat requires stamina management, and feels a lot like The Fantasy Trip, honestly, which, I like that. It all feels very intuitive.

There is a flow for expeditions. Choice of ship and stocked supplies are important — poor planning makes survival less likely. A number of possible random events happen during travel, and then at the site all sorts of horrors await (determined by a series of random tables). Still, as much as mutant aliens are a big risk, I find that time is the greatest enemy here.

If the characters survives, there are NPCs to chat with, story arcs to update, downtime activities to partake in. It’s extremely interesting to see A. How well thought out and nested all these systems are while B. Remaining logical and fairly simple to use. I approached the rules as a solo, and I think it is extremely well executed for that, but what surprised me was the realization that, as the game is also intended for group play, was how all the ease-of-use built into the solo systems really facilitates the GM’s job. I’m keen to see the next one!