When The Blood of Dawnwalker was finally revealed, many couldn’t help but compare it to CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher franchise, and for good reason. An open world, fantasy elements, and a protagonist with some funny-looking eyes, as well as Rebel Wolves, a new studio, being comprised of mostly ex-CD Projekt Red veteran developers made it a simple comparison.
All that said, the comparison can’t be made with The Blood of Dawnwalker’s most unique feature, which many originally worried about.
The Narrative Sandbox is Everything to The Blood of Dawnwalker
Set in a 14th-century, plague-addled southern Europe, The Blood of Dawnwalker will have you playing as Coen, a half-human, half-vampire hybrid desperate to save his family after they’ve been kidnapped. Facing supernatural and human enemies alike, you’ll have to decide what to do and when to do it if you hope to succeed. Talking to PCGamer, The Blood of Dawnwalker’s design director Daniel Sadowski had plenty to say, especially about the game’s 30-day, 30-night time limit feature.
“The time system is a core element of our narrative sandbox. It moves only when you do the content (such as a quest or task) because we do not want the time system to be there to rush the player or to stress them out. We want the time system to be part of the narrative experience, and part of the whole ‘both action and inaction have consequences’ approach.”
The inclusion of time limits in games is nothing new, whether it be the time limit of a match on EA Sports FC or an older title like the 72 hours in Majora’s Mask, but in a modern-day RPG, it sounds scary and worried many that we’d have to rush our way through the experience.

With Daniel Sadowski explaining it, it turns the mechanic on its head, and instead of being a strict time-limit mechanic, it’s now going to make us wonder what to do, where to go, and more. Is this worth our time? No. Okay, let’s go do this quest and so on. Daniel Sadowski continued:
“It will work in interesting ways. It will definitely force you to make choices at some points, like what to do, and what to ignore because you will also have to choose which content you want to do, and which content you want to ignore, in order to maximize your chances of defeating the main enemy. But you will be able to choose between different ways to approach the problem, and that all ties into the narrative sandbox again.”
It’s increasingly sounding like we’ll be getting multiple playthroughs of The Blood of Dawnwalker, if you’re unable to complete everything in one sitting, and with different approaches promised, and a ‘narrative sandbox’ as Rebel Wolves keep referring to it as, it could well be the most exciting new IP of 2025.
How this time-limit mechanic eventually weaves its way into the world Rebel Wolves are creating for us will be interesting to see, but if it manages to naturally work with us, rather than force us to rush through the game like other similar mechanics have done in the past, it could end up being much bigger for the genre than the studio realizes.
Rebel Wolves’ The Blood of Dawnwalker release date is unknown currently, but it is confirmed to launch on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
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Luke Addison is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Thumb Wars. Having previously been a part of multiple outlets over the years, including building an entire gaming team from nothing to something, he thought it best to forge his own path and answer only to himself. As likely to be found playing the latest game as he is in the kitchen relaxing (by cooking), he always brings the same bold and brash attitude to everything he does, with a heavy leaning on sarcasm and dry wit!