Vampiric powers, timed quests, and dynamic choices shape this atmospheric open-world RPG where your decisions—and failures—truly matter.
The Blood of Dawnwalker, developed by Rebel Wolves, could be the next big thing in RPGs with stories. The game was shown off in a detailed one-hour gameplay reveal as more than just another action RPG. It’s a dark, atmospheric sandbox where players have real control over the story and the grim allure of vampire powers.
The changing of day and night is what makes The Blood of Dawnwalker interesting. When the day comes, you play as Coen as a person. Like For Honor, combat is based on directional melee techniques, where the angle of your attacks and parries determines how well you do. That means timing and where you stand are very important.
You can also use hex-based skills, like acid dust to blind enemies or burning blood spells to kill them, but they cost something. Every powerful move costs something, whether it’s your health or a debuff. This makes every choice you make in battle a tactical one.
But the real scary stuff starts at night. Coen’s vampire side comes out, and the game changes in both its gameplay and audio. Shadow Step lets you move faster and climb walls, which lets you get to places you couldn’t get to before. Your fighting style changes, too. You focus on claws or magical weapons that cut your enemies clearly. The night not only makes your abilities stronger, but it also changes how you move around and do quests.
The combat system looks good—attacks are strong, fighting enemies is tense, and using abilities gives the fights more depth. But there might still be one big problem: the camera. The camera stays too close the whole time, even when you’re not fighting. This makes the experience less fun and limits your ability to see the beautifully designed environments. This worry has already been voiced by many viewers of the reveal, including people in the community. Since the build is still in pre-beta, there is still time to make it better.
The game takes place in the mythical region of Valis Sangura in the Carpathian Mountains. The setting is filled with both horror and dark romance. The Blood of Dawnwalker tries to put players in a world that is alive and changing because of folklore and their own actions. The main city hub, Sartra, has moody architecture, and there are also creepy crypts and biomes covered in snow.
What you do does matter. Different parts of the world respond to the choices you make in different ways. If you make too much chaos, new laws might be made. The city gets more dangerous, the guards are stricter, and paths that used to be open may be closed. It’s not often that you can interact with an RPG this much, and it makes your journey feel unique and unpredictable.
The 22-day time limit to save Coen’s family is one of the most interesting mechanics that was shown. Every new part of the story moves the clock forward. But here’s the clever twist: time only moves forward when the story does. It won’t take you days to aimlessly wander, steal, or explore. Your time bars only get used up when you make big choices, like confessing to priests or finishing important quests. This design gives you room to move around and explore without the usual stress that real-time systems can bring.
Still, the countdown makes you feel like you need to act quickly all the time. If you don’t act in time, the game will let you off the hook. It’s a brave choice to make an RPG that accepts that your actions have consequences, not just the ones you choose to do.
One of the game’s best features is that it doesn’t have strict rules about what quests are “main” or “side.” Every mission helps you move forward by letting you into new areas, making allies, or improving your gear. And there are different ways to do quests at different times of the day. During the day, a cathedral door might be locked, but if you use your vampire powers to climb the walls at night, you can get in. With that much freedom and responsive design, there are a lot of different ways to play and play again.
The game even has boss fights early on that are technically possible to beat if you’re ready, but are very hard to beat if you’re not. During the demo, one of these bosses, Zante, shows this. If you challenge her too soon, she will easily beat you. You might have a chance if you wait, look around, and get ready. It’s a beautiful mechanic that rewards both being curious and being careful.
There are three types of skill trees: human, shared, and vampire. You can improve both active and passive abilities to get better benefits, such as making claws stronger or extending the length of hex durations. Gear, on the other hand, uses a standard RPG rarity system. You can change how your armor, weapons, rings, and amulets look. There are probably deeper systems that have to do with crafting and exploring.
Crafting was shown in the demo, but it wasn’t fully explained. It’s still unclear whether that includes forging weapons and armor or just staying on consumables. But the fact that there are blacksmiths and traders suggests that upgrading gear is handled in a more traditional RPG way.
What we do know is that people are often rewarded for exploring. There may be powerful amulets hidden on hidden rooftops. Quests can come up naturally when you talk to NPCs. Environmental storytelling, like a blood trail leading into a cave, can lead to side content that isn’t in the quest log. The difference between great RPGs and just good ones is this kind of natural discovery.
Coen’s vampire powers give him more than just cool skills. To stay alive, you’ll have to drink blood. You can knock out or kill enemies, but if you don’t control your hunger, Coen could lose control and drain innocent NPCs. That NPC might have been very important to a quest or the story. Real things will happen, and there is always a risk.
If you want to play in a more moral way, you can get blood from other sources, like animals, which might not give you as many benefits. These morally gray systems keep the balance between survival and restraint in a constant state of flux.
Coen’s supernatural actions are believable, and NPCs often run away in fear when they see his powers. There are also different times of day in the game. During the day, characters move around and do different things, making the world feel real. They have plans, so enemies don’t just hang out waiting for you. This makes unexpected encounters more exciting.
Even though they still need work, the cutscenes have a cinematic feel that makes me think of old RPGs. The lip-syncing could use some work, but the writing and delivery already give the story a lot of weight. There are secrets that characters keep, different dialogue options have meaning, and trust is hard to earn. The fact that nothing is certain makes every choice more important.
The Blood of Dawnwalker is still in its early stages of development, but it’s already clear what it wants to be. The story structure, timed quests, two types of gameplay, and world design that respond in a lot of different ways all point to a game that wants to be something special. If the developers can improve the camera, slow down some parts, and keep adding to the story and variety of environments, this could be on par with big games in the same genre, like The Witcher 3 or Dragon Age: Origins.
The creators have stated that the player’s freedom is very important to them. There are already too many choice-based RPGs out there, so this is a nice change. You can fail here. Things can get missed. That’s what makes The Blood of Dawnwalker so exciting: you can make your experience very different from someone else’s.
Based on the feedback loop from this early preview, the developers seem determined to make every part of the game better. With freedom and real-life consequences, The Blood of Dawnwalker could become one of the most interesting RPGs in years if they are successful.
