Game of the Week – The Blood of Dawnwalker is the ultimate vampire RP…

• The Blood of Dawnwalker's 30-day time limit is not as punishing as it sounds, making it the perfect weekend play for a more languid RPG experience or something to dip into all week.

Even after learning of its high-stakes time limit, The Blood of Dawnwalker has been one of my most-wanted RPGs of 2026. Developer Rebel Wolves has more than delivered upon its promise to "push the genre forward" by making time itself a currency, and instead of letting myself get side-tracked at every turn, I've found that the extra pressure has kept me focused on main and character quests instead.

I spent all of last weekend playing the new game and managed to beat it on Day 10, so there's no reason you can't do the same! That said, don't be fooled by thinking you need to race through The Blood of Dawnwalker due to the 30-day time limit: I went about things pretty languidly and spent a lot of in-game hours leveling up, yet still finished with a third of the allotted time remaining.

Why play it today?

• The Blood of Dawnwalker has some of the coolest lore and most inventive storytelling devices I've seen since The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

I'm a (blood)sucker for a decent RPG story, and The Blood of Dawnwalker is a masterclass in narrative design. The open-world sandbox means you decide how much of Vale Sangora's lore you want to dig into, from haunted places to pixies and beyond, but I love how key characters quests unfold to teach us more about not only the world he lives in, but Coen's past itself.

From uncovering what happened to his late little brother to father Pieter's past as a roving merc-soldier, Rebel Wolves does a beautiful job of setting Coen up as a saga-spanning hero to rival The Witcher 3's Geralt by slowly peppering these tales through the open world. It's just one reason why I recommend approaching The Blood of Dawnwalker unafraid of the 30-day limit. I promise you'll have plenty of time to dig into Coen's backstory and rescue his parents from Brencis' clutches. This level of storytelling demands it!

Time commitment:

The best thing about The Blood of Dawnwalker is that it really is up to you how you approach its time restriction. You could use it as an opportunity to get laser-focused on the main story and some important NPC missions and finish it in 25-35 hours. This would have you ending the game with around 15 to ten days spare out of the 30-day timer.

You could also squeeze a bit more out of the open world's various side quests at the same time and still finish up in time to save Coen's family a day or two before the timer runs out (perhaps taking you around 28-35 hours).

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You could even go full completionist. Bin off the timer altogether and deliberately fail to confront Brencis at all in those initial 30 days, and Coen's goal to becomes to avenge rather than rescue his family, scrapping the 30-day countdown. I don't recommend doing that, really. It might give you free rein to do as much side content as you like, but the timer its pretty forgiving and you really can get a lot more done in it than you might think.

Play The Blood of Dawnwalker if you love...

Skip The Blood of Dawnwalker if you want:

One thing to know:

I have run into a few crashes and performance issues while playing The Blood of Dawnwalker on my Xbox Series S, and the same has been reported by PC players. Thankfully, Rebel Wolves has already released a second update patch since the RPG's September 3 release date, this time targeting game stability and some amusing bugs (chatty corpses, giant torches... You get the gist).

Dawnwalker definitely feels much smoother to play now for many, though PC and Series S owners might need to have a little more patience. Performance seems to vary at the moment (I'm still getting a few crashes on here and there), and the latest patch has made some loading screens a bit slower over the past day for me.

So, could you stand to wait out another patch? Sure. Game crashes suck and it's frustrating if an autosave fails to kick in just beforehand. But if you have a PS5 handy, I'd say it's a perfect time to rip that bandaid off and get stuck into Coen's adventure now.

A moment you'll remember:

Exploring a creepy fog-enshrouded convent with herbalist-witch Anca, who returns to her Sisters to find their plague-ridden reanimated corpses still roaming the grounds. It's a thrilling taste of terror to really knuckle down on the gloomier side of Vale Sangora's often picturesque setting (if you ignore the blood farms, distilleries, and more), and is the first longer dungeon-style mission that requires a more hefty timesink. Very worth it though, especially if your goal is to woo Anca.

The final verdict:

Even with its performance issues, some repetitive enemy types, and a few teething problems (pun intended), The Blood of Dawnwalker is an incredibly worthwhile game to play this weekend. The impressive scope of it is truly astounding, especially when you factor in the lower budget the ex-CD Projekt Red devs at Rebel Wolves are working with compared to a traditional triple-A studio. With gorgeous voice acting, inventive mission design, and a super varied combat system, the result is a pacy thrill ride that's not afraid to let you do things differently. In our The Blood of Dawnwalker review, despite some misgivings, we did praise that "hands-off exploration is mostly respected" in its RPG open world.

So, where can you play it?

The Blood of Dawnwalker is out now on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PS5.

How to get started with The Blood of Dawnwalker:

Getting to grips with The Blood of Dawnwalker's directional parries, three combat systems, and twisty RPG framework can be confusing, so here are some handy guides to get your adventure in Vale Sangora off to a good start:

If you're saying "fangs, but no fangs" to Dawnwalker, check out our best RPGs round-up to find the right fit for your weekend

Among the additions coming in the upcoming The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past DLC is a new kind of weapon for Geralt, a big old chain he uses to whip and lasso enemies. It's a cool, nifty piece of equipment, and something CD Projekt Red has had in its back pocket since making the original game, over a decade ago.

Two developers, Jakub Rokosz, game director on Songs of the Past, and Despoina Anetaki, senior quest designer at CDPR, discussed the subject with BBC News. "We were talking about implementing the chain even during the original The Witcher 3," Rokosz recalls.

"It was impossible to do at the time for various technological reasons and challenges," he continues. "A few things had to click together, and we were able to address those challenges and issues during the remaster, so then we were able to implement a weapon that feels just natural and very fluid."

He says it "realizes a fantasy" you may have if you've read the Witcher books, since Geralt wields a chain regularly in the novels from Andrzej Sapkowski. Further connectivity between the source material and the games is good to see, and having more combat options makes Songs of the Past even more appealing, since this is a real late-game addition.

Anetaki explained a little more about why it made sense to include the chain now. "It fits with the narrative theming of the Songs of the Past," she says. "It fits with all the new enemies that work with the chain. We were able to do crowd control with the swarmions, that swarm you and you have to keep them away from you."

She points out it's a "cool weapon" for people "who might be sick of the crossbow by now." More versatility is always welcome, and considering there are players who'll have put in hundreds of hours over the years, it's especially so here.

The Witcher 3's Songs of the Past expansion wouldn't be "possible" without the RPG's remaster, says CD Projekt Red: "The stars had to align."