The Blood of Dawnwalker’s Day/Night Loop Influences Gameplay

The Blood of Dawnwalker is one of this year’s most anticipated games, inspired by The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Rebel Wolves, the game’s developer, apparently feared that players wouldn’t want to play as a human Coen, the game’s protagonist, early in the game’s development stage.

The Blood of Dawnwalker’s Gameplay & Combat System

Combined with new developers and veterans of CD Projekt Red, Rebel Wolves created a complex combat system to set a new standard for RPGs. As a human during the day, Coen can fight with swords, fists and other weapons at his disposal. During the night, Coen bites, claws and bites his way through objectives as a vampire with supernatural skills. The day/night cycle, which players can change as they wish, affects the active quests and the overall storyline. The game does have a time limit of 30 days and 30 nights.

To ensure that players can connect with Coen as a human, the developers implemented a magic system that includes the ability to speak with the dead. As the story takes place in 14th-century Europe, at the height of the Black Plague, magic in The Blood of Dawnwalker is mysterious and obscure and requires exploration throughout the game’s open world in order to discover as much magic as possible. Because magic in the game requires runes being carved into flesh to unlock hexes, which heals once Coen takes his vampire form, he can’t use magic at night.

Rebel Wolves CEO Konrad Tomaszkiewicz shared his philosophy regarding the studio and the primary motivation behind The Blood of Dawnwalker. He said:

“I believe that RPGs should be about choice. My vision for Rebel Wolves is to get a few steps closer to pen-and-paper RPGs. Where there is a gamemaster who can evolve the story and your experience in different ways once you start taking action, but always to the same goal. That’s why we are building this narrative sandbox, and why we want players to have the freedom to shape their own way of playing in the world we are creating.”

Coen has limited time to save his family from an ancient clan of vampires in the isolated gothic kingdom of Vale Sangora. Meanwhile, the kingdom’s citizens are enslaved into ritualistic servitude. Each quest accepted progresses the story and the game’s time limit. After the prologue, players essentially have free will with how they want to reach their primary objective.

The Lore of Dawnwalker