The Blood of Dawnwalker is the debut fantasy RPG from new Polish developer Rebel Wolves, a studio founded by former members of Witcher outfit CD Projekt. In June, obvious vampire thrall Mark expressed happy emotions about main character Coen's balance of mortal and undead abilities - by day, he'll trot around having regular human chinwags with people and participating in regular human swordfights, by night he transmogrifies into a nimble Nosferatu, able to teleport and slash people with his talons. Now, it's time to dig further into the game's two critical resources, which are handily encapsulated by the title: time and blood.

The game revolves around a 30-day, 30-night quest to rescue your family from some bastard vampire lord's castle. Time doesn't tick down continuously, however, as in the likes of The Legend Of Zelda: Majora's Mask. Instead, each day-night cycle is broken into eight periods, represented by a bar. Within each period, you're free to explore and carry out less significant tasks without advancing the clock. The world is frozen, however lively it may appear: burning houses will flake and fizzle away indefinitely without collapsing into ash. Actions marked with an hourglass option, however, bring that period to an end and shuffle you onto the next.

The Blood of Dawnwalker — Gameplay Overview Watch on YouTube

"We were thinking that if time would flow naturally, it might be quite unpleasant. The playstyle would change on the go [from human to vampire and back to human] constantly without your input," creative director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz told IGN in a recent interview. "So that's where the time as a resource idea came in."

The other thing to know is that the sequence of tasks, events and objectives is strongly player-led. You can rock up to the aforesaid castle and pick a fight with Vlad The Endgamer after completing the prologue, if you choose, though you'll be poorly equipped to prevail. The majority of other goals appear to be optional. You can even skip the daytime periods entirely if you dislike mingling with the human cattle. The game doesn't end following the resolution of the business with your loved ones, and it's possible this won't prove to be the most important part of the tale.

Speaking of human cattle, Dawnwalker also lets you get your fangs into NPCs, including significant story characters. The more necks you suck, and the more general mayhem you cause, the more Notorious you'll be. The world reacts to high notoriety in ways familiar from the Dishonored games: expect more guards, but also, more opportunities to terrify the smallfolk into doing your bidding.

One of the more interesting twists is that you can deprive Coen of blood to nourish his human side, but this may eventually cause him to escape your control. "If you starve Coen, if you don't feed him enough, and if you go into important conversations, he can lose control and just kill off important NPCs," Tomaszkiewicz told IGN. It reminds me of Don't Nod's Vampyr and also, the Dark Urge from Baldur's Gate 3.

I like the sound of this skippable, rearrangable and segmented campaign structure. I also quite like the day/night playstyle distinction, though I'd like to know more about Coen's vampire abilities. Not that Blood Of Dawnwalker is exclusively about vampires. Rebel Wolves are already teasing future games in the world, with Tomaszkiewicz telling PCGamesN that "in this origin story, we needed the vampires because Coen has this vampire nature, but when we're thinking about the saga, we'll include parts that are not about vampires at all, and are instead about other species."

It's out in 2026. Seems like a promising throat-guzzler, if you ask me, but then again I am partial to such things (see bio).