‘The Blood of Dawnwalker’ Is a Bloody Balm for My Completionism

I drink the blood of my fourth rat tonight. It’s only got so much life to give, so as soon as I drain it, I know I'll need to feed again. My hunger is not fulfilled. My health bar is only half full. I need more blood. Now. I toss the rat away as my glowing eyes flicker to another, just across the street. I bare my sharp, bloody teeth, turn into a cloud of shadow and bats, and teleport to my unsuspecting prey. I bite down hard. It’s too late to realize my target has changed. As I swarmed, a human city guard happened to walk right in front of me. My teeth sink into his throat instead. I could let go, but I do not. I drink, drink, drink. Then he falls to the ground. Dead. I wipe my mouth as the last rat scurries away into the dark. “Well, I guess I’m going to Hell anyway,” my character quips. The Blood of Dawnwalker is a vampire simulator and role-playing video game that launches today. It’s a dark adventure where you play as the titular Dawnwalker—human by day, monstrous vampire at night. You can’t talk about The Blood of Dawnwalker without talking about The Witcher 3. They’re both third-person monster-slasher video games starring handsome protagonists with cool scars on their faces, both made by some of the same people. Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, a former director at the Polish game studio and Witcher developer CD Projekt Red, was one of three directors of the very popular The Witcher 3. His new studio, Rebel Wolves, even feels like a cheeky nod to Geralt, the main character of The Witcher series who is often called the White Wolf. The gameplay and graphics feel very similar. Combat involves swinging your sword and blasting magic abilities, while cutscenes and dialog have familiar dialog trees and quick-time events. You have a special sense that makes important items glow so you can find footprints and track down monsters. The music also sounds almost identical to The Witcher 3 soundtrack—think somber swelling violin strings plucking away while you wander a gloomy open world. I was almost ready to allege copyright infringement before realizing that Dawnwalker features the work of fellow Witcher composer Mikolai Stroinski. Ah, so, “We have The Witcher at home,” is that it? Well, not exactly. The sameness might feel derivative at first, but give it a minute. Once you get through the prologue, the world opens up in a way that invites exploration of its very pretty, blood-soaked world. There’s no way to beat The Witcher 3 in depth, breadth, or sheer volume, but The Blood of Dawnwalker doesn’t try to replicate or surpass that scale. Instead, it gives you a simple goal and a limited time to pull it off. That sounds restrictive at first, but it plays out in a way that's more freeing than you’d expect. Dawnwalker takes place in a fictional plague-era medieval world. You play as Coen (I call him Young Geralt), a poor peasant who lives with his family in a town controlled by evil vampires. After some inciting events, the Draculean boss vampire kidnaps Coen’s family and turns him into the Dawnwalker—a vampire hybrid that manifests as a human in the daytime and a bloodthirsty vampire at night. You’ve got 30 in-game days to save Coen’s family. You’re already running out of time. Gameplay is split into day and night cycles, each with eight time segments. Completing a quest or doing anything of consequence will pass one or a few time segments. Otherwise, time does not pass idly. If you’re running around and exploring, you have all the time to fart around in the world that you need. The game warns you when something you're about to do will pass the time, so you can choose to keep going or leave and find something else to do. I worried this system would feel constricting, like being forced on a set path in an open-world game. Turns out, it was exactly what I needed to stay motivated and keep exploring. My problem with The Witcher 3 and open-world games like it is that there is so much of it. You’re tasked with some time-sensitive mission—rescue your daughter before the world ends, etc.—but then you while away hours and hours on side quests. Games like this can punish you if you rush the main storyline, cutting off quests, choices, and even characters that those smaller efforts would have unlocked. When I play, I feel obligated to do all the small stuff first, then build to the main quests. When a narrative and world gets that dense, it can start to feel like a chore. Dawnwalker gives you many activities across the world. Some are clearly story quests; many are treasure hunts or things that feel much smaller-scale. Knowing I can’t do everything lets me prioritize what needs doing. A ticking clock always counting down on the screen usually would make me anxious in games, since failing to do the right things at the right time means you lose. Weirdly, Dawnwalker’s countdown feels less punishing and more like motivation to do the very best you can with the limited resources you have. If you know you can’t see everything in a single playthrough, it’s easier to let go of the things you miss. It’s by no means a perfect game. The Blood of Dawnwalker is a clunky name. It really should be Blood of the Dawnwalker or just Blood of Dawnwalker. (Dawnwalker is your character’s title after all, not his name.) There is also undeniable jank throughout, like when you sheathe your sword, it floats directly behind the center of Coen’s butt. When you run with your heightened vampiric sense, the sword bounces around and spanks Coen’s behind as he runs. It is very funny, and I hope the devs don’t change it. It is particularly unfortunate for Dawnwalker that the game is launching in the shadow of news that The Witcher 3 is getting a free remastered update later this month and a whole new expansion pack in 2027, 11 years after its original release. Despite all the blood, gore, and sorrow, Dawnwalker has charm and a lightness to it. Combat is bloody, wet, and satisfying. At night, Coen’s vampiric abilities are a hoot, letting you teleport around across the rooftops, drink the blood of any crawly creature you like, and sprint across the map as a wolf. Most of the vampires, aside from smokeshow Coen, are the truly monstrous kinds, all claws and teeth and gory bloodsucking. But the world slowly reveals some real beauty. The other characters develop and become much more interesting than they first appeared. The voice acting that carries some pretty wrenching story beats and character moments is stellar. Above all, it does something remarkable: It takes an established game formula and really infuses it with its own personality and quirks. It takes a bite out of the Witcher formula and makes it its own. And has a bloody good time doing it. [Image text:] THE BLOODOF DAWNWALKER