TheRetroArcade
Veteran
Posts: 9,918
Joined: Feb 2026
Joined: Feb 2026
I’m Coen for you, Brencis
The Blood of Dawnwalker's a vampire RPG with plenty of Witcher DNA, but also enough in its time limits and criss-crossing narrative threads to set it apart from CD Projekt's work.
The moment I knew The Blood of Dawnwalker had it came when, not far in, one of the local peat diggers fell into a big hole. Tasked with finding him by his brother at the start of what seemed a fairly mundane early fetch quest, I rolled my eyes a bit as I slid in to try and locate the poor sod. He was, predictably, cowering in a corner of the cave complex. Right, now to get out of here and claim a lifetime supply of partially decayed vegetation.
Wait, what was that noise? I’ll not spoil the rest of the quest, but suffice it to say that it provided the first taste of Rebel Wolves’ vampire RPG offering the same sort of memorable adventure as the series many of its devs cut their teeth on - CD Projekt’s Witcher and Cyberpunk games.
The Blood of Dawnwalker’s Witcher DNA is obvious. It has a detective-style focus mode that highlights things in the world you should investigate or follow in yellow, just like Geralt’s witcher senses do. Its daytime combat mixes sword swipes that only do damage if an enemy isn’t blocking with parries, dodges, and recharging magical abilities that provide an extra edge in a similar fashion to a witcher’s signs. One of those magical abilities also allows Coen to briefly reanimate corpses in order to interrogate them, much like Yennefer does in that Witcher 3 quest about the cursed garden in Skellige. Dawnwalker also has vampires who rip and tear through foes with long claws and can zip around or climb unassailable structures as clouds of mist.
If you told someone watching you play it that it’s a CD Projekt spin-off called The Witcher: Blood of Dawnwalker, developed because someone there fancied making an entry in that series without a cat-eyed medieval fantasy pest controller as protagonist, you’d have no trouble convincing them. Aside from not being totally ancient, the game's bright-eyed 14th century peasant hero, Coen, plays like you might expect Witcher 3 Blood and Wine vamps Regis and Detlaff to if they were the lead. He does have a chink in his armour compared to those two, though. In the daytime, Coen’s human, with his vampiric powers only kicking in once the sun goes down. Thus, the game splits itself into a day and night cycle, with each made up of six segments of time which tick away a certain amount on completing a quest or activity, some of which are only available while the sun or moon are out.
By night, you move like a supernatural force, warping and whipping around terrified foes in a frenzy of blood-fuelled power fantasy. So throbbing are you with crimson vigor that you face the peril of having your destructive craving for the red stuff overwhelm you mid-conversation either because you’ve chosen that option, or simply because you’ve let your health dip low enough that your body decides it needs a sanguine boost. That said, I’ve found it pretty easy to avoid having this result in accidental drainings of friendly NPCs - both by regularly snacking on animals in the wilderness whenever my segments of life force were to empty, and by leaving a lot of the talking-heavy activities to daytime Coen. As such, aside from the few times guards have spotted me teleporting onto a rooftop and a chase through the streets has ensued, I’ve never felt much like Coen’s dark gift comes with much of a curse. Well, I say that, but sometimes the teleportation can lead to rather janky-looking climbs, especially while warping up jagged cliffs - though I’m not sure if there’s a way the devs could have filed this away without adding guardrails that blunted the fundamental fun of whooshing about.
Instead, the curse often feels like it kicks in whenever you have to fight large groups or tough foes in human form. Rather than the rapid darting in and out of claw strike range you can lean on in vampire form,...Read more: Full article on www.rockpapershotgun.com
What do you think about this?
The Blood of Dawnwalker's a vampire RPG with plenty of Witcher DNA, but also enough in its time limits and criss-crossing narrative threads to set it apart from CD Projekt's work.
The moment I knew The Blood of Dawnwalker had it came when, not far in, one of the local peat diggers fell into a big hole. Tasked with finding him by his brother at the start of what seemed a fairly mundane early fetch quest, I rolled my eyes a bit as I slid in to try and locate the poor sod. He was, predictably, cowering in a corner of the cave complex. Right, now to get out of here and claim a lifetime supply of partially decayed vegetation.
Wait, what was that noise? I’ll not spoil the rest of the quest, but suffice it to say that it provided the first taste of Rebel Wolves’ vampire RPG offering the same sort of memorable adventure as the series many of its devs cut their teeth on - CD Projekt’s Witcher and Cyberpunk games.
The Blood of Dawnwalker’s Witcher DNA is obvious. It has a detective-style focus mode that highlights things in the world you should investigate or follow in yellow, just like Geralt’s witcher senses do. Its daytime combat mixes sword swipes that only do damage if an enemy isn’t blocking with parries, dodges, and recharging magical abilities that provide an extra edge in a similar fashion to a witcher’s signs. One of those magical abilities also allows Coen to briefly reanimate corpses in order to interrogate them, much like Yennefer does in that Witcher 3 quest about the cursed garden in Skellige. Dawnwalker also has vampires who rip and tear through foes with long claws and can zip around or climb unassailable structures as clouds of mist.
If you told someone watching you play it that it’s a CD Projekt spin-off called The Witcher: Blood of Dawnwalker, developed because someone there fancied making an entry in that series without a cat-eyed medieval fantasy pest controller as protagonist, you’d have no trouble convincing them. Aside from not being totally ancient, the game's bright-eyed 14th century peasant hero, Coen, plays like you might expect Witcher 3 Blood and Wine vamps Regis and Detlaff to if they were the lead. He does have a chink in his armour compared to those two, though. In the daytime, Coen’s human, with his vampiric powers only kicking in once the sun goes down. Thus, the game splits itself into a day and night cycle, with each made up of six segments of time which tick away a certain amount on completing a quest or activity, some of which are only available while the sun or moon are out.
By night, you move like a supernatural force, warping and whipping around terrified foes in a frenzy of blood-fuelled power fantasy. So throbbing are you with crimson vigor that you face the peril of having your destructive craving for the red stuff overwhelm you mid-conversation either because you’ve chosen that option, or simply because you’ve let your health dip low enough that your body decides it needs a sanguine boost. That said, I’ve found it pretty easy to avoid having this result in accidental drainings of friendly NPCs - both by regularly snacking on animals in the wilderness whenever my segments of life force were to empty, and by leaving a lot of the talking-heavy activities to daytime Coen. As such, aside from the few times guards have spotted me teleporting onto a rooftop and a chase through the streets has ensued, I’ve never felt much like Coen’s dark gift comes with much of a curse. Well, I say that, but sometimes the teleportation can lead to rather janky-looking climbs, especially while warping up jagged cliffs - though I’m not sure if there’s a way the devs could have filed this away without adding guardrails that blunted the fundamental fun of whooshing about.
Instead, the curse often feels like it kicks in whenever you have to fight large groups or tough foes in human form. Rather than the rapid darting in and out of claw strike range you can lean on in vampire form,...Read more: Full article on www.rockpapershotgun.com
What do you think about this?