For some reason, I feel like Super Blood Harvest: The Bloodship Returns (2023) pairs well with Across a Thousand Dead Worlds, though I am hard pressed to put my finger on a reason why. Sometimes it’s just like that, you know?

Bloodship is the work of Dirk Leichty and is the sequel to Super Blood Harvest (2020), which I adore. The original was presented, in a sort of meta way, as a videogame on paper, and the same is true here, with the initial rules section featuring setting menus and such. Like NES-era sequels, this one is both recognizably connected to the original while also being wildly different — here the Sword Princess and her companions are fighting to rid the Rocket Kingdoms of the space vampires, where in the original the events took place on our own moon and Mars.

The scenario itself is presented in three parts — the Blood Bath, Floating Platforms and Tower Maze — which are connected, sort of, by Exteriors. Each has its own vibe (the Tower Maze, for instance, is cold and dimly lit) and the players proceed through them by navigating a number of maps (they feel like screens, though, keeping the videogame feel). All of this is presented in Leichty’s deliriously garish isometric art. I love how at a glance the pages are bewildering, but once I look at them closely they become simple to parse. The rest of the book is filled out with monsters and treasures. The final page offers a method for scoring, which lends a sort of improbably re-playability (presumably using different “settings”) to the proceedings.

I love it. It isn’t as wildly boundary-pushing as the original (though at least part of that feeling for me comes with my increased familiarity with Leichty’s art style so YMMV) but I think it is far easier to parse for play. I also like the rules (which I think are a slightly tweaked, lighter version of Dirk Rules!, but I cannot find my copy of those to confirm, alas).