If you've given The Blood of Dawnwalker a go, odds are you've got thoughts about the 30-day and 3-night timer it applies to Coen's quest to save his family from fate most vampy. Devs Rebel Wolves are very much aware of how divisive the feature's proven, and now the game's director's made clear that it's not guaranteed to return in future entries unless it can be made to mesh with the story being told.

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Being a vampire is a pretty raw deal... or so the vamps inform us when they are not having freaky gothic sex, shapeshifting into wolves, enjoying the slimming effects of a uniquely low-carb diet, or enduring through marvellous future epochs we foolish cattle can only dream of.

I find most stories about vampirism tend to do a poor job of convincing me that vampirism is to be avoided. "Immortality is no gift, but a curse," breathe the bloodsuckers, like parents telling kids that staying up late only makes you tired in the morning, and I think: OK, so you're definitely going to outlive everybody you've ever loved, but also, 1) you've got marble hard abs, and 2) you're going to be knocking around when generations to come finally put a stake through capitalism and roll out UBI.

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Look, I know it's way to early to be talking about sequels to The Blood of Dawnwalker, given Rebel Wolves' vampire RPG hasn't even been out a week as I write this. However, the game's devs are already putting pieces in place to get on with making such a game, so with help from strong spoiler tags, I'm doing it.

THIS IS A VERY STRONG SPOILER WARNING FOR THE BLOOD OF DAWNWALKER, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

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Coen, the half-man and half-vampire protagonist of The Blood of Dawnwalker, doesn’t like chomping down on rats.

I know this because he’s told me multiple times, after I’ve made him slurpily drain a rodent like it’s a furry Frube (other brands of tubed yoghurt are available). Sometimes he shudders a bit and makes noises of disgust. Other times he straight up says things like "This is not a nice thing to do". I know it’s not, farmboy whose family needs saving, but what’s the alternative?

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Witcher-flavoured vampire RPG The Blood of Dawnwalker has received its first post-launch patch, with developers Rebel Wolves dipping their fangs into a modest neckful of problems with blocked quest progression and general controller behaviour on PC. They've also taught a blacksmith a new recipe. Alas, the devs are still working on fixes for those problems with stuttering, PlayStation button-mapping, and shader compilation we covered last night. Still, at least little Lunka will no longer get hopelessly lost while walking you through the tutorial.

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It's The Blood of Dawnwalker release day! The debut game of Rebel Wolves and the first new game from director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz since The Witcher 3. A day of what should be celebrations for many, I'm sure, instead a day of "oh, huh, this isn't running so well on PC, is it?" This is fairly common for big releases these days, but the devs do come with some temporary suggestions for the variety of issues they're aware of.

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Why the rush, The Blood of Dawnwalker? Your protagonist Coen's family have only been kidnapped by a vampiric dictator who's slowly draining them of blood. Let the kid take his sweet time in finding a way to deliver them from the castle dungeon. After all, he's got a tonne of bandits he could be killing and other fun little adventures he could be stumbling across as he explores Vale Sangora. The good news for folks who don't like even the vague idea that they need to get a move on in their hero duties is that Dawnwalker's taken less than a day to get a mod which substantially lengthens its 30-day family saving timer.

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The Blood of Dawnwalker, Rebel Wolves' vampire RPG with more than a touch of Witcher 3 running through its veins, is about to claw-slide down a wall into release street. Depending on where in the world you live, it'll either arrive late on September 2nd or first thing on September 3rd. Ahead of that, in a bid to accelerate modders' early attempts to put their own spin on the game, Nexus Mods have released some of their own open-source tools designed to cut some of the faff out of Unreal Engine modding.

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The moment I knew The Blood of Dawnwalker had it came when, not far in, one of the local peat diggers fell into a big hole. Tasked with finding him by his brother at the start of what seemed a fairly mundane early fetch quest, I rolled my eyes a bit as I slid in to try and locate the poor sod. He was, predictably, cowering in a corner of the cave complex. Right, now to get out of here and claim a lifetime supply of partially decayed vegetation.

Wait, what was that noise? I’ll not spoil the rest of the quest, but suffice it to say that it provided the first taste of Rebel Wolves’ vampire RPG offering the same sort of memorable adventure as the series many of its devs cut their teeth on - CD Projekt’s Witcher and Cyberpunk games.

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