It’s no easy feat to create an RPG that grabs players' attention. It’s harder still to find a new angle that breathes some life into the genre. But Rebel Wolves has managed to accomplish both with The Blood of Dawnwalker.

The team includes a number of CD Projekt Red alumni, and they've created something here that, while familiar to fans of The Witcher, plays with some new ideas and carves out its own space, making it feel like your first journey into the genre, keeping us hooked, even now.

Set in the 14th century, at the height of the plague, Vale Sangora has been taken over by vrakhiri – better known as vampires. After a short-lived but disastrous uprising, the player-character Coen sees his family kidnapped by the evil lord Brencis.

Every failed uprising has a silver lining, however, as Coen becomes a Dawnwalker – vampire by night, and human by day, which will come in handy, because you’ve got 30 days and nights to rescue your family before Brencis executes them at his coronation.

Switching from human to vrakhiri creates an interesting dynamic when it comes to solving problems. As a vrakhiri, Coen is stronger, can teleport, and can use vampiric abilities to give himself the edge in tough fights – but the thirst for human blood is ever present, and if you ignore the hunger for too long, Coen will give in and feast on the first human he can find.

In conversations, you’ll see choices replaced with "give into the hunger", limiting your options, if Coen doesn’t automatically give in without your input. So, you’ll need to keep on top of things – feeding on rats, deer and wherever else you can find a quick snack, if you plan to avoid chowing down on a human jugular.

Minor blood addiction aside, you'd think that playing as a vrakhiri would make every situation easy, but in human form Coen can use witchcraft to cast spells in battle and talk to the dead, amongst other things, so each form has its pros and cons, depending on the situation.

Some missions will be locked to day or night depending on the context, but most you’ll be free to tackle however you wish, whether that’s sword-first during the day, talking to corpses for some insight and blagging your way out of trouble, or creeping around at night, walking up walls and teleporting to discreet entrances – maybe even draining some unsuspecting guards of their much-needed blood.

Time is a finite resource in Blood of Dawnwalker but not in a way that feels gimmicky. After all, the game continues after your 30 days run out if you don't save your family in time. But what you’ve achieved in that period has a wider effect on the story that unfolds, and the challenge you’ll face to bring the curtain down.

As you prepare to save your family – or avenge them, if you meander too much – you’ll have the chance to uncover secrets, forge alliances and learn new skills, but a lot of these activities will push the clock forward, to varying degrees, meaning you’ll have to choose wisely.

Not every little thing you do will pass the hours, so you won’t be clock-watching and rushing to buy armour, chat to the locals, or fight off some wild animals and mystical beasts. But the real meat of character development and story progression will cost you, sometimes quite large amounts of time.

It’s an interesting way of adding weight to your choices, as you’ll want to put more caution and intent into who and what you invest your time and energy in. Helping a certain person or group could pay off later or could be a distraction that leaves you with little more than some extra XP.

The Blood of Dawnwalker is also quite a focused affair. At first glance, the map seems quite small compared to other heavy hitters in the genre, but when you realise how densely packed it is with things to do, it pays off, resulting in a map that never feels too claustrophobic or dauntingly massive.

There’s a lot of reflection amongst characters and your own actions will be judged along the way. You’ll often be left with some incredibly hard decisions to make, without ever fully knowing a character's motives or intentions, or having any actual evidence of their crimes.

Instead, you'll need to take a more nuanced approach based on the person you want Coen to be, rather than looking for the 'right' choice, as there likely isn’t one. It’s something other big RPGs like Baldur's Gate 3 and The Witcher have played with a lot, and Rebel Wolves has done a great job implementing the same here. We were quite surprised with some of the decisions thrown into our hands, and the characters that paid the price for them.

Similarly, levelling up isn’t a straightforward affair either, with Rebel Wolves putting its own spin on things. As you’d expect, XP levels you up and gives you points to spend across your three skill trees – Witchcraft, Sword Mastery and Vampirism – however, each point could cost a chunk of time. And on top of that, not all skill upgrades are available by default, as some require you to find books along the way to make them available.

If you want to upgrade your vampiric abilities to higher levels, you’ll need to drink more and more human blood to raise your chaos level and make them available – essentially trading your humanity for more power. Again, it’s an interesting take on morality as rather than a sliding scale or a tangible change to Coen’s character, you instead have to do more and more questionable and eventually quite evil things if you want to make the most of your vampiric qualities.

Combat, as you might expect, has a familiar feeling – mixing sword attacks and magic/vampire abilities to do bursts of damage, while keeping an eye on your stamina to not run out of puff. The Blood of Dawnwalker throws in a little twist though, adopting a directional system that’ll keep you from going on autopilot.

Each enemy has a little directional marker on them that’ll flash which direction they plan to attack. If you block in the same direction, you can parry and get the chance to counter at a directional weak spot for maximum damage. In some senses, it’s a simple enough idea, but it makes encounters feel like they’re on a knife edge and when you’re surrounded – which happens often in busy streets – you’ll need to keep your wits about you so you can block anyone charging in to take you out. It feels solid and satisfying each time you’re dragged into a battle, with an ebb and flow that makes you feel like a sword master.

On your quest to bring down Brencis and save your family, you’ll have the chance to hurt his court of vampire minions along the way. Destroying blood supply lines, freeing prisoners and attacking convoys – each raise your infamy to Brencis and his minions, until you anger one of them enough to offer you a duel to the death.

There’s so much to do in the game, we couldn’t help but get sidetracked and lose days to interesting stories and fun battles with supernatural creatures, so we expect you’ll have a lot of tough choices to make on what you do and don’t experience on your first playthrough – knowing full well you’ll want to replay this again and again to see it all and see things differently.

The Blood of Dawnwalker is one of the most unique and engrossing RPGs in years, with a refreshing take on time management and satisfying gameplay loops that’ll have you making tough choices that really put you in seemingly impossible positions. With such a focus on giving agency over to the player, it’s impossible not to feel invested in every choice and seeing how things unfold up until the very end.

The Blood of Dawnwalker launches on 3 September on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. We reviewed on Xbox. You can order your copy now.

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