The Blood of Dawnwalker: How The Witcher 3 Game Director Made It, Development, Launch and Reviews

The Blood of Dawnwalker launched on 3 September 2026 on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. It is the first game from Warsaw studio Rebel Wolves, founded by Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, the game director of The Witcher 3. It sold a million copies in three days, holds 83 on Metacritic and has 85.7% positive reviews on Steam. Here is the whole story: who made it, where the Witcher resemblance comes from, what development went through, how the launch went and what critics and players say.

Who made it: Rebel Wolves and the people from CD Projekt Red

The studio's story starts with a departure. In May 2021 Bloomberg reported that Konrad Tomaszkiewicz had spent several months under an internal CD Projekt Red investigation over a mobbing complaint, meaning workplace bullying. The commission did not find him guilty and he denied the allegations, but he resigned anyway. In an email to staff he wrote that many people felt fear, stress or discomfort working with him, and apologised. He told Bloomberg he was sad and a bit disappointed.

Tomaszkiewicz spent 17 years at CD Projekt Red. He started in story design on the first Witcher, was lead quest designer on the second, directed The Witcher 3 and both expansions, then worked as design director on Cyberpunk 2077 before becoming vice president of game development. In February 2022 he founded Rebel Wolves in Warsaw, at first with his own money, and brought in former colleagues.

The studio started with about 20 people, had 90 by May 2024 and 160 by April 2026, admin and publishing staff included. In November 2022 China's NetEase bought a minority stake, while the studio kept creative control and the rights to the game. Bandai Namco signed on as publisher in October 2024, a publishing deal rather than a stake in the company. Tomaszkiewicz keeps the team small on purpose, a lesson he took from Cyberpunk 2077:

I want Rebel Wolves in 10 years to be exactly the same size.

Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, The Game Business, April 2026

What the game is about: a vampire with thirty days to spare

The story is set in the mid 14th century in Vale Sangora, a fictional Carpathian valley built on Hungarian and Romanian myth. A plague is ravaging the kingdom. The vampire Brencis seizes power, promises a cure and levies a blood tax on the people. The hero is Coen, a peasant who becomes a Dawnwalker: human by day, vampire by night. He has 30 days and nights to save his family from Brencis.

Dawnwalker is planned as the first part of a saga. Tomaszkiewicz promises that each future game will be a standalone story set in another era, and the Summer Game Fest trailer in June 2026 showed Coen in the present day.

Each installment in the series will be a standalone game with its own story, without narrative cliffhangers.

Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, June 2026

Why it reminds people of The Witcher 3

The first reason is the people. The game was made by The Witcher 3's game director, its lead quest designer, one of its writers and an artist from the whole trilogy. Their handwriting is the same: grim Eastern European folklore, quests with moral choices and no right answer, a gruff hero with a sword, and monsters you study before you kill them.

Journalists spotted it right away. After a four-hour preview, PC Gamer wrote that the game borrows a lot from The Witcher 3 for good and bad: as in The Witcher 3, the prologue works as a small model of the whole game, and the combat is just as dull. At gamescom 2025, Game Informer listed medieval dark fantasy, a grumpy swordsman, a female choir in the score and similar swordplay. Polish magazine CD-Action put the comparison straight into its review headline: more than The Witcher 3, but less than the developers promised. The audience overlaps too: Alinea Analytics estimates that about 58% of Dawnwalker's Steam players had played The Witcher 3.

Tomaszkiewicz does not run from the comparisons. Asked in April 2026 how he felt about them, he said:

Really comfortable. I feel really confident about our game.

Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, The Game Business, April 2026

The differences are many, and they go deep. Geralt has no timer, Coen has 30 days. Geralt has one form, Coen has two with different abilities. Directional blocking in combat is closer to Kingdom Come: Deliverance than to The Witcher. There is no main story in the usual sense. And the team is many times smaller than CD Projekt Red's. Tomaszkiewicz has said that opening a new company just to repeat the past would make little sense:

We want to push the boundaries of AAA RPGs by adding some risky stuff, which gives you more immersion, more emotions, and a different feel when you play.

Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, PC Gamer, April 2026

Development: four years, NetEase and a fight over 60 fps

In 2025 the biggest threat to the project looked like money. NetEase was cutting back on Western studios at the time, and some were closing while others hunted for new owners. Rebel Wolves had to answer publicly. In February 2025 co-owner Tomasz Tinc wrote that NetEase remained a minority shareholder, that most of the studio belonged to Konrad and other co-owners, and that production was fully funded. We found no reports of NetEase leaving or of layoffs at the studio.

The schedule surprised even the developers. The 2026 window was named at the reveal, and the game hit it without a single delay. There were no reports of crunch at the studio either. In April 2026 Tomaszkiewicz told The Game Business he was surprised at how smoothly it had gone.

The loudest row came two weeks before launch. In late August 2026 the console specs turned out to have no 60 fps mode, and players were angry. The developers answered quickly with "We heard your feedback" and promised a 60 fps performance mode in the day-one patch. The exception is Xbox Series S, which stays at 30 fps.

Launch on 3 September 2026

The game came out on 3 September on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, and on Steam it unlocked on the evening of 2 September, New York time. The Steam price is $69.99. A large day-one patch arrived with it, and the studio's press release noted that development took more than four years. In the same release Tomaszkiewicz wrote:

Four years ago, a small group of friends came together and decided to do the impossible: create a truly unique RPG.

Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, 3 September 2026

PC performance is a mixed picture. In its technical review, CD-Action measured an RTX 5070 Ti with a Ryzen 7 9800X3D in a forest area: 30 fps at native 4K Ultra, about 57 fps with DLSS Performance, and about 50 fps at native 1440p. The magazine noted a CPU bottleneck in towns, no HDR, and under 60 fps on Steam Deck. IGN, on the other hand, wrote that the game avoids the usual Unreal Engine 5 problems on PC. On PS5 Pro the performance mode holds 60 fps.

How critics and players received it

Reviews went live on 31 August, a nervous day for the studio. Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz admitted on X that waiting for the scores had been nerve-wracking, to say the least. The result was strong: 83 on Metacritic across platforms and 8.2 from users, 85 and a Mighty rating on OpenCritic, where 92% of critics recommend it. On Steam, reviews moved from Mostly Positive in the first week to Very Positive, at 85.7%.

Press scores vary widely, from 9.5 at Destructoid to 3 out of 5 at GamesRadar+. PC Gamer called it one of the best blockbuster action RPGs in years, Eurogamer a hell of a debut, and IGN one of this year's best open-world RPGs.

The studio is already thinking about what comes next. On 8 September, less than a week after launch, Jakub Szamałek posted a job opening:

I'm looking for a lead writer to help me and the narrative team craft the next chapter in the Dawnwalker saga.

Jakub Szamałek, Rebel Wolves, September 2026

In short, The Blood of Dawnwalker resembles The Witcher 3 because the same people made it, but it is not a clone. The 30-day timer, the two forms and the lack of a linear story make it a different game. If you loved The Witcher's quests, you will very likely enjoy it. If you want polished combat from an RPG, watch the gameplay above first.