The Blood of Dawnwalker is an uncompromising, human RPG - and it's now my most-wanted game

Published: July 7, 2026

The highest compliment I can pay The Blood of Dawnwalker is that the moments where it least feels like The Witcher 3 are those where it pushes above and beyond its closest point of comparison. I've been given but a taste of the upcoming RPG from Rebel Wolves, and yet it's become that first drop of blood to a newly minted vampire - leaving me scratching and clawing at my calendar, desperate to sink my fangs into the full-bodied experience. Vicious, glorious, and uncompromising in its vision, I'm now convinced this is going to be one of the most talked-about games by the time the year is out.

Rebel Wolves now numbers 160 developers, but many of its key figures are veterans of The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 studio CD Projekt Red, right down to Game Director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, who was previously one of the leads for The Witcher 3. The team isn't shy of that heritage. From the question marks dotting the map, to Coen's ability to scour the environment for clues with a monochromatic investigation filter, and even the way dialogue options are presented as yellow if they'll move the conversation forward and white if they won't, this is a setup that will feel immediately familiar to Witcher fans.

Ultimately, however, those are minor presentation notes, and why fix what isn't broken? Where The Blood of Dawnwalker stands apart is where it truly matters: in its escalation of choice and consequence to tell a player-driven story that should feel unique to everyone, and in a frantic combat system that had me grinning from ear to ear, even as I fell to Murohn the Malformed Monstrosity for the fourth attempt in a row. It's a game that had me constantly reaching for the quick-save key, and yet was still able to push me into situations and decisions I wasn't fully comfortable with.

Before I get too deep into that, let's set the scene. We're in 14th-century Vale Sangora, a fictional region in the Carpathian Mountains pulling from Slavic and Balkan influences. The area is in the vice grip of a powerful vampire - a Vrakhir, in Dawnwalker's parlance - called Brencis. Each month, he visits your village for a simple but unrefusable trade: a font full of blood, taken 'willingly' from all the adults, each paid in return with a sip of his own, which is capable of curing all diseases.

This is of little comfort to protagonist Coen and his family, however. The Vrakhiri blood can't help Coen's mother Esme, who is suffering from mental trauma and refusing to eat. This is where our tale begins, with a desperate plea to local herbalist Anca, who prepares a stronger drink to get Esme through the upcoming Blood Mass. It will cost twice what we usually pay; I can't afford this, and I tell Anca as much. Reluctantly, but warmly, she lets it slide for the lower price. She also invites me to stay a while and catch up, at which point the game informs me this will double the time my visit takes.

Time is everything in The Blood of Dawnwalker. It doesn't progress automatically, but rather with every key action you take - everything from advancing a side quest to learning a new skill comes with an hourglass count. Eight of these make a day, and another eight the night, with the world on a constant cycle. I have to help my mother and be at Blood Mass by sundown, so I reluctantly decline the offer. Even in this introductory segment, there are far more activities than I have time to complete, and speaking to others at the preview event it becomes clear that what you choose to do matters. Some options feel so immediately essential to me, however, that my typical choice paralysis barely even rears its head.

Esme makes it to Blood Mass, and is able to offer her requisite blood, but not before Brencis clocks that she's struggling. "It appears this herd shall soon need culling," he snarls. Coen can't help it; he snaps back: "Monster." Brencis offers a chilling response: "Offend me ever again, young man, and you shall find out I truly am one." At this point, I'm going to fast-forward us slightly and establish that this pointed threat doesn't take too long to manifest, resulting in Coen's life being torn apart; his family are snatched away to captivity in Greifberg Castle, and his body is twisted into a new form.

The Vrakhiri transformation bestowed upon you doesn't take as it should, leaving you half vampire, half human - a Dawnwalker. This isn't under your control; it's tied directly to that day/night cycle, forcing you to think smartly about your actions and when you choose to undertake certain activities. In the dark, traditional food and medicine do nothing for you. Your only method of healing is to drink blood, whether human or animal. Fail to do so, and you'll begin to succumb to your primal instincts.

This can have serious ramifications - while in conversation with other characters, dialogue choices will begin to flicker: "Give in to the hunger." Mistakenly click one of these - or grow so thirsty that your other options simply fade away altogether - and you might find yourself going to chow town on someone you'd rather have kept around. Within mere minutes, I was desperately snatching at rats on the ground, draining one after another dry in an attempt to keep myself from more serious consequences.

The good news is that you gain some powerful abilities as a Vrakhir - we're talking instant teleportation and walking on walls and ceilings, and that's just what you learn five minutes in. Peering at the skill tree I see the potential to learn mind control, a blood-fuelled rage mode called "Crimson Rush," instant-kill moves on enemies below me, and even the ability to shapeshift into a wolf any time I'm running about the world. From night one, unleashing the vampire within feels immensely freeing, giving me easy access to locations I would be awkwardly locked out of in human form.

That doesn't mean Coen is powerless in the daytime. Under the guidance of Anca - surprise, she's actually a witch - I'm taught magical abilities, earned by carving hexes into my skin. Again, Dawnwalker wastes no time in starting small; my first trick is the ability to compel the dead to speak. This won't hurt, Anca emphasizes, although she warns that it comes with an unshakable trauma that won't soon leave. Why did she learn it, then? "To see if I could - it seemed exciting," she responds, with a grim sarcasm. "Curiosity, famous killer of cats."

Both your Witchcraft and Vampirism powers offer plenty of ways to amplify your battlefield potential, but Dawnwalker's real ace is its directional combat. Every attack you deliver comes from the left, right, top, or bottom, and every block or dodge must be angled to match those of your enemies. It's not the first of its type, but the implementation is sublime - I'm playing on mouse and keyboard, and after a few flubbed attempts I'm dancing in and out of groups. It doesn't rely on heavy animation locks, so you can quickly shift gears to counter an incoming threat, and when you get it right you feel incredible.

The action is relentless and lethal, however, even on the standard difficulty, and quick-save quickly becomes my best friend. Stronger enemies, such as the aforementioned Murohn, throw out moves in rapid succession, and having to deal with even three enemies at once forces you to think carefully about your positioning. One thing is certain: it's absolutely exhilarating. The successes and the mistakes are mine. It's the sort of battle system where even after dying three or four times to the same encounter, I'm gleefully smacking the reload key and running back in for more. Fighting was always more a necessity than a joy in The Witcher 3, but here it's possibly my favorite part of the game.

If the chaos gets too much, you can block without a directional input, which guarantees a safe response but at the cost of more stamina. If you're less of a fighter, there are accessibility features to mitigate the challenge further, such as the ability for incorrect directional inputs to still work with a stamina penalty, or the freedom to access your full inventory of consumables mid-combat, not only those in your quick slots. Should you prefer to make things harder, you can hide the directional input indicators, forcing you to rely on watching animations alone - the toughest difficulty setting also enables this, and makes the action more lethal for both Coen and his opponents.

Dawnwalker's dialogue comes out swinging in similar fashion. I'm frequently presented with multiple ways to handle a situation, and the optional beats strike a good balance of informative and chatty, including several lines that I deliberately avoid picking for role-playing purposes. One aspect that lands particularly well is the ability to embrace vulnerability: "I'm scared," I have Coen tell Anca as she attempts to parse what's happening inside his body. There's real humanity at play here, most notably with the dynamic between this particular pair, and I find myself hanging onto every word.

Prior to the Blood Mass, I took a moment to teach the kids to fish, which turned into a tense standoff with one of Brencis's soldiers. Fortunately, his senior arrives: Uriash, a gruff beastman. "I give orders. You follow." The leering guardsman is forced to stand down from his threats. Uriash hands us a small gift for our young sister Lunka: he tells us he doesn't want to have to kill people. "Valley big. Big enough for all." It's an unexpectedly sweet moment, and much the same subversion of expectations that The Witcher 3 often delivered so well.

Later, I stumble onto some farmland at night, looking for the cousin of an accomplice of Coen's. This turns out to be a mistake: the place is crawling with guards. One asks Coen's name. I deflect, he persists. I attempt a bluff with my young brother's name: "I'm Mirto, sir, a local farmhand." Unfortunately, his companion remembers it as one of their captives. Fortunately, I'm able to convince him that it's commonplace, and am let off with a warning. Elsewhere, I stumble into another soldier camp, and one draws steel with a shout, only to relax when I quickly turn tail and step away. There's a pleasing nuance to these encounters, the kind of 'dancing around danger' that makes poking the boundaries of Hitman feel so good.

Back to the story, and in the wake of Coen's transformation, he learns that Brencis plans to keep his family in captivity for 30 days and 30 nights, ready for his grand coronation. Rebel Wolves note that the game doesn't immediately end after this deadline - you're free to keep playing and exploring the world - but it is a hard line in the sand, limiting how long you have to prepare for your assault on Greifberg Castle. Outside of that main goal, everything else you choose to pursue is up to you.

You can gather allies, you can work to build your own strength and skills, but you cannot do it all. "You will not unlock everything in one playthrough," Tomaszkiewicz tells me at the event. "Giving this freedom to the players, the way of shaping their character and experience through the game, I think that this is very important. Because on the one hand, you need to accept that people will not see everything we created in one playthrough - that's for sure. But on the other hand it gives a lot of possibilities, a lot of replay potential, and a lot of conversations between the players. We cannot wait to read and see what people will do."

You could, if you want, throw all of that aside and head straight for the castle. "It's doable, but hard as hell," Tomaskiewicz remarks. He motions to the fact that I've already faced Brencis in battle during the prologue - an encounter that didn't go well for me, to put it lightly. Had I defeated him there, he says, my mission would have already been a success. Environment Artist Adam Payet adds, "If you think about it, in the village, he's just in a village, not in his castle. A significantly more defensible position, where all of his generals are." Point taken: I'm going to have my work cut out for me to get ready for this one.

Rebel Wolves seems willing to routinely throw you into the fire and see if you're prepared. While making the herbal concoction for my mother, I'm asked for the correct steps to take, and realize that I've failed to read the recipe book as instructed. I take the safest option: I hit Escape and load my most recent save. It's the coward's way out this time, but be warned that you'll be asked to use some intuition on occasion; even once I have studied the correct method, I have to actually remember it when putting the process into practice.

With The Blood of Dawnwalker, the studio has done an excellent job of putting its own unique spin on its mythos, crafting a tale that feels fresh and exciting. Its characters feel well grounded in the world, and its decisions carry a weight that ensures you'll want to make every last second count. At the same time, the intense action had me ready and willing to face every encounter head-on. As the final minutes of my hands-on time tick away, I'm left charging across the landscape in my newfound wolf form, looking for any trouble I can find, just to get one last taste of its sublime swordplay.

I'll close by touching briefly on performance, just to say that I ran into no issues during my preview time. I was obviously on a fairly controlled build, with a well-equipped machine, but I had no complaints there. The most awkward thing I saw was Coen's animations struggling to keep up when I attempted to push my luck and scramble over some rocks that probably weren't designed for climbing, instead of walking around the path, but I still managed to pull it off, and the brief experience was more fun than frustrating. Other than that, it's looking in fantastic shape already.

The Blood of Dawnwalker releases on Monday September 3, 2026. It's unquestionably the game I'm most eager to play right now. I can tell its deadly combination of time pressure and meaningful choice is going to tear me apart, but at the same time its full commitment to that ethos is strangely freeing. How much of a monster will you become? When it's this much fun to embrace your bloodthirsty side, I'm not sure I know myself.