It was a bad time to be a vampire fan and enjoyer of video games until precisely September 2, 2026, when a team of CD Projekt Red veterans released The Blood of Dawnwalker, easily the best vampire game in years. Rebel Wolves didn't take home any awards at the Golden Joysticks this year, but it showed a lot of class by congratulating and paying respect to its competition, including Ultimate Game of the Year, Resident Evil Requiem. We caught up with Rebel Wolves founder and Blood of Dawnwalker game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz at the Golden Joysticks, and his mood was celebratory.
"Many people told us the vampire genre is cursed somehow," Tomaszkiewicz says. "I think that we somehow lifted this curse. We have our own place in the genre also, with the narrative sandbox and hybrid combat and the other things we have, and it's great to have something like this because we already have ideas how to expand it and how to make even more crazy ideas in the game. I'm really happy because, for us, the development was a lot of fun."
It's definitely true that there's a stigma around vampire games in particular that's been hard to shake for, oh, I don't know, ever. The Castlevania series set an impossibly high standard going back to the '80s, and on second thought, may have inadvertently cursed the genre to be plagued by clunkers like Vampire Rain, Redfall, and most disappointingly, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2. There have definitely been some moderate successes over the years; I liked Vampyr alright, and most recently Castlevania: Belmont's Curse has been a triumphant revival, but by and large vampire games really put the suck in I want to suck your blood.
The Blood of Dawnwalker isn't just an extraordinarily solid vampire game, it's also one of my favorite RPGs in recent memory, with The Witcher 3-caliber writing across its entire main quest and every side quest I've encountered. I'm not sure exactly what Tomaszkiewicz means when he says Rebel Wolves has expansion ideas, but the studio has confirmed a sequel is on the way.
6 things I need from The Blood of Dawnwalker's sequel
