There's an ill wind howling through the valley -- and no, it isn't just the plague ravaging 14th-century Eastern Europe. A family of vampires has taken over the quiet stretch between the Carpathian Mountains that you call home, and they've made you one of their gifted thralls. Now it's up to you, a peasant given the powers of the blood-draining undead, to save your family, and perhaps the valley itself.
At a preview event in Los Angeles, California, I got an early hands-off look at Blood of the Dawnwalker, the upcoming action RPG due out in 2026 from Polish studio Rebel Wolves and published by Bandai Namco. While I didn't play the game, I watched a lengthy presentation shown to a group of media members as a developer played a live build, walking us through the various cycles and mechanics that players will navigate in their quest to save the valley.
But in conversation with two of the game's developers, I heard that Blood of the Dawnwalker has an uncommon feature -- one that's perhaps best known from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. From the beginning of the game, you can march up to the game's end boss, the vampire Francis, and try to defeat them.
"We have this narrative sandbox and our goal here is to tell the players, alright, you're out of the prologue -- you do you. If you want to go and storm Brencis' Castle right here right now, go," said Piotr Kucharski, writer at Rebel Wolves. "In fact, we invite it, right? We want to see those people on YouTube."
That prologue sets the stage for the game: Protagonist Coen's sister is infected with the Black Plague. She's nearly killed by religious zealots but for the timely intervention of Brencis' coven of vampires, who turn her into one of them. Their attempt to turn Coen fails, turning him into an empowered half-vampire. He has 30 days to save his family -- but players can go about saving them in any way they choose. Each major action takes precious time, but players can choose to progress as they want. This means it's possible to miss a ton of events and quests in the game.
Play by day or night -- the choice is yours
The demo started at the gameplay overview, embedded above, but extended much further. The game's developers walked us through a fork in the road in a quest for a magic sword. By day, as a mere human, Coen worked his way through church bureaucracy by hunting down a wayward caretaker who turned into a monster in a quarantined almshouse. He finally got access to a book in the church library, which identified which sigil to look out for in the graveyard. The sword, it turns out, was sequestered in a tomb with its bearer.
Daytime activity can involve swordplay, including use of magic-like hexes used in and out of combat, but it's mostly geared toward investigation. You'll talk (including to the dead, thanks to a handy Compel Soul hex), read books and get answers. But, as with nighttime, any prolonged activity like a lengthy conversation (indicated on the screen with a special icon, so players won't be surprised) could take a segment of time, ticking the clock closer to Coen's end-of-month deadline.
Rebel Wolves
At the halfway point of the demo, the developer went back to show how things could be done differently at night, using Coen's vampiric powers to shadowstep across rooftops and walk up walls -- making it easy to sneak into that library to find the right book. But guards patrolling the graveyard would have to be dealt with to unearth the tomb, giving the developer the chance to show Coen's undead fighting capabilities (including goring with claws and draining blood). Descending into the tomb, we found the sword, but it was still held by an undead knight imprisoned in the walls -- a Dawnwalker like us gone mad by an extended lifetime of hunger and starvation.
... continue reading