Everything We Know About The Blood of Dawnwalker — A New Game from Former The Witcher 3 Developers
Recently, the Polish studio Rebel Wolves shared new concept art for their debut project, The Blood of Dawnwalker. In fact, news about this highly anticipated vampire RPG has been surfacing regularly, revealing many intriguing details since its announcement. We've gathered the most interesting ones in this article.
Who Are Rebel Wolves?
The Blood of Dawnwalker is being developed by a studio founded by former CD Projekt developers. The team is led by Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, the director of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Other key figures from The Witcher trilogy have also joined, including writer Jakub Szamałek, quest designer Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, and art director Bartłomiej Gaweł. In total, Rebel Wolves consists of approximately 120 people.
In an interview, Konrad explained why he left CD Projekt:
I set up Rebel Wolves because I felt that I wanted to make something that is unique with my friends. Of course, we have a huge love of RPG games, and what has been done before in the past. But I feel that those things, those rules of RPG games, can be expanded and evolved. We had crazy ideas. We knew that, you know, if we wanted to make them, we needed to open our own studio, because it would be hard to convince any big company — you know, with non-IP — to change, and do something new, and do something crazy. Actually, it’s risky, because we’re doing some solutions which are new.
Which CD Projekt role-playing game did you like the most?
Carpathian Vampires
The project is, in some ways, a spiritual successor to Blood and Wine. Like The Witcher 3's final DLC, The Blood of Dawnwalker tells a vampire drama within an open-world RPG.
The game is set in the Carpathian region of an alternate 14th-century Eastern Europe. Taking advantage of the devastation caused by a terrible plague, vampires plan to emerge from the shadows and seize power in the fictional kingdom of Sangor. This kingdom blends elements of real cultures from the Carpathian region.
The protagonist, named Cohen, is a half-human, half-vampire. His transformation was unsuccessful due to prolonged exposure to silver while working in a silver mine. His body is saturated with silver, preventing a complete transformation. During the day, Cohen remains human, but at night, he gains the supernatural abilities of a vampire.
Cohen's main goal is to save his family from the vampires. His greatest adversary is Brensis, a powerful vampire leader who has existed since the Roman Empire. Brensis aims to establish a vampire despotism in Sangor. Under his rule, vampires have isolated the country and created a new religion. According to its tenets, humans must worship the terrifying vampire overlords as gods in exchange for their healing blood.
Timed Quests?
Cohen has 30 days and nights to save his family. And yes, this is not just a narrative element — the player must choose which quests to prioritize since it's impossible to complete everything.
This is perhaps the most intriguing yet risky design choice, setting The Blood of Dawnwalker apart from modern RPGs and bringing it closer to classic titles like the original Fallout. Time is a limited resource in Rebel Wolves’ project, constantly forcing the player to make difficult decisions: whom to help and whom to abandon. In an interview with GamesRadar, Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz stated that the studio aims to naturally increase tension and make every choice meaningful.
Additionally, the developers hope to avoid the narrative dissonance present in The Witcher 3. On one hand, its story urged Geralt to find Ciri as quickly as possible, presenting it as a life-or-death matter. However, in practice, the player could freely play Gwent, search for lost frying pans, or complete countless side contracts while Ciri simply waited.
That said, if the concept of a strict time limit seems too stressful, it's important to note that the timer often pauses. For example, while the player is exploring the world without an active mission, time remains frozen. Only quests activate the timer, and the game clearly notifies the player each time this happens.
Daywalker
Another unique feature of The Blood of Dawnwalker is the protagonist’s shifting abilities depending on the time of day.
Rebel Wolves' designers want players to feel like superheroes — but not all the time. This led to the concept of a protagonist who is an ordinary human during the day, vulnerable like everyone else, but transforms into a powerful vampire at night, gaining enhanced strength, speed, and unique abilities. The developers say this duality is a well-known trope in pop culture but remains largely unexplored in video games.
By the way, if a player decides to embrace their monstrous side, the game won't stop them — all story NPCs can be killed.
A Compact Open World
Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz stated that while the studio aims for The Blood of Dawnwalker to match The Witcher 3 in quality, the overall scale will be much smaller:
Our games are not as huge in terms of amount of content and gameplay hours — we are a smaller studio, this is our first project, so we definitely are building something smaller. But we want to build something as robust in terms of quality, maybe a bit shorter.
The estimated playtime is around 30–40 hours, which is still quite substantial.
The open world will also be smaller than The Witcher 3’s, but this helps eliminate empty, meaningless areas. According to Tomaszkiewicz, the team drew inspiration from the first Gothic:
It was an open world, but it was much smaller, and it kind of made me experience it differently compared to these behemoths where it's just impossible to really know every nook and cranny because it's so big, so you kind of rush through it. But when the world is a bit smaller and you explore it more calmly and more relaxed, you kind of get to memorize these places, and it feels more like you actually know the place. It makes you feel like you're more inhabited.
What we still don’t know are the details of The Blood of Dawnwalker’s combat system — or its release date. However, the information revealed so far is enough to see the project’s potential. We’ll keep following it closely — this summer, the developers promise to showcase full-fledged gameplay.
What do you think of The Blood of Dawnwalker? Does it intrigue you? Share your thoughts in the comments.
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