Game of the Week – The Blood of Dawnwalker is the ultimate vampire RP…

• The Blood of Dawnwalker's 30-day time limit is not as punishing as it sounds, making it the perfect weekend play for a more languid RPG experience or something to dip into all week.

Even after learning of its high-stakes time limit, The Blood of Dawnwalker has been one of my most-wanted RPGs of 2026. Developer Rebel Wolves has more than delivered upon its promise to "push the genre forward" by making time itself a currency, and instead of letting myself get side-tracked at every turn, I've found that the extra pressure has kept me focused on main and character quests instead.

I spent all of last weekend playing the new game and managed to beat it on Day 10, so there's no reason you can't do the same! That said, don't be fooled by thinking you need to race through The Blood of Dawnwalker due to the 30-day time limit: I went about things pretty languidly and spent a lot of in-game hours leveling up, yet still finished with a third of the allotted time remaining.

Why play it today?

• The Blood of Dawnwalker has some of the coolest lore and most inventive storytelling devices I've seen since The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

I'm a (blood)sucker for a decent RPG story, and The Blood of Dawnwalker is a masterclass in narrative design. The open-world sandbox means you decide how much of Vale Sangora's lore you want to dig into, from haunted places to pixies and beyond, but I love how key characters quests unfold to teach us more about not only the world he lives in, but Coen's past itself.

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From uncovering what happened to his late little brother to father Pieter's past as a roving merc-soldier, Rebel Wolves does a beautiful job of setting Coen up as a saga-spanning hero to rival The Witcher 3's Geralt by slowly peppering these tales through the open world. It's just one reason why I recommend approaching The Blood of Dawnwalker unafraid of the 30-day limit. I promise you'll have plenty of time to dig into Coen's backstory and rescue his parents from Brencis' clutches. This level of storytelling demands it!

Time commitment:

The best thing about The Blood of Dawnwalker is that it really is up to you how you approach its time restriction. You could use it as an opportunity to get laser-focused on the main story and some important NPC missions and finish it in 25-35 hours. This would have you ending the game with around 15 to ten days spare out of the 30-day timer.

You could also squeeze a bit more out of the open world's various side quests at the same time and still finish up in time to save Coen's family a day or two before the timer runs out (perhaps taking you around 28-35 hours).

You could even go full completionist. Bin off the timer altogether and deliberately fail to confront Brencis at all in those initial 30 days, and Coen's goal to becomes to avenge rather than rescue his family, scrapping the 30-day countdown. I don't recommend doing that, really. It might give you free rein to do as much side content as you like, but the timer its pretty forgiving and you really can get a lot more done in it than you might think.

Play The Blood of Dawnwalker if you love...

Skip The Blood of Dawnwalker if you want:

One thing to know:

I have run into a few crashes and performance issues while playing The Blood of Dawnwalker on my Xbox Series S, and the same has been reported by PC players. Thankfully, Rebel Wolves has already released a second update patch since the RPG's September 3 release date, this time targeting game stability and some amusing bugs (chatty corpses, giant torches... You get the gist).

Dawnwalker definitely feels much smoother to play now for many, though PC and Series S owners might need to have a little more patience. Performance seems to vary at the moment (I'm still getting a few crashes on here and there), and the latest patch has made some loading screens a bit slower over the past day for me.

So, could you stand to wait out another patch? Sure. Game crashes suck and it's frustrating if an autosave fails to kick in just beforehand. But if you have a PS5 handy, I'd say it's a perfect time to rip that bandaid off and get stuck into Coen's adventure now.

A moment you'll remember:

Exploring a creepy fog-enshrouded convent with herbalist-witch Anca, who returns to her Sisters to find their plague-ridden reanimated corpses still roaming the grounds. It's a thrilling taste of terror to really knuckle down on the gloomier side of Vale Sangora's often picturesque setting (if you ignore the blood farms, distilleries, and more), and is the first longer dungeon-style mission that requires a more hefty timesink. Very worth it though, especially if your goal is to woo Anca.

The final verdict:

Even with its performance issues, some repetitive enemy types, and a few teething problems (pun intended), The Blood of Dawnwalker is an incredibly worthwhile game to play this weekend. The impressive scope of it is truly astounding, especially when you factor in the lower budget the ex-CD Projekt Red devs at Rebel Wolves are working with compared to a traditional triple-A studio. With gorgeous voice acting, inventive mission design, and a super varied combat system, the result is a pacy thrill ride that's not afraid to let you do things differently. In our The Blood of Dawnwalker review, despite some misgivings, we did praise that "hands-off exploration is mostly respected" in its RPG open world.

So, where can you play it?

The Blood of Dawnwalker is out now on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PS5.

How to get started with The Blood of Dawnwalker:

Getting to grips with The Blood of Dawnwalker's directional parries, three combat systems, and twisty RPG framework can be confusing, so here are some handy guides to get your adventure in Vale Sangora off to a good start:

If you're saying "fangs, but no fangs" to Dawnwalker, check out our best RPGs round-up to find the right fit for your weekend

After five years in early access, Valheim 1.0 finally launched this week with its final biome, a new boss, lots of extra weapons, armor, and monsters, and more than 50 achievements—though those cheevos were locked up tight if you used the command console to activate cheats.

That just changed, at least for Steam users. Twin patches were released for Valheim today containing a handful of bug fixes and tweaks, and one big change to achievements.

"The fixes include a function to let you opt into using achievements even though you have been blocked from doing so because of previous usage of devcommands," developer Iron Gate says. "We will leave it to your own judgement whether or not to activate this function–Oden will surely know if you use it dishonourably."

This new command is just for players on Steam, and it rolls right off the tongue:

"Achievements can now be opted into even if you have used devcommands or mods by the new devcommand 'yesiuseddevcommandsbutiwantmyachievementsanyway'."

If you're new to using cheats in Valheim, by the way, we've got you covered with our Valheim console commands guide, which we updated for 1.0 so you can spawn new Deep North materials, weapons, foods, and items. And now you can use them while still earning achievements, even if it means Oden will be disappointed in you. Nice!

Also in the patch, you can now repair your Deep North armor, which is good news, and you can no longer punch snow to remove it, which is bad news, because punching things should always solve problems in survival games (now you'll need to craft a shovel instead).

Amusingly, players discovered a couple of days ago that Valheim's new timberwood drawbridges were too narrow to fit a cart across—kind of an important feature for a bridge—but the devs promised a quick fix, and that's included in today's patch as well.

Here's the dual patch notes:

Patch 1.0.10 – All Platforms

• The heavy armour in Deep North can now be repaired
• Greydwarf Shamans in Deep North now deal appropriate amounts of damage and healing
• Punching no longer removes snow
• Landing on snow without directly walking now removes the snow
• Various sound effects updated for several creatures and the snow in Deep North

Patch 1.0.12 – Steam Only

• The following fixes are fully crossplay compatible and will be extended to all platforms in an upcoming hotfix, which we're pushing out as soon as possible.
• Using the Forge of Potential no longer unlocks recipes that should not be unlocked
• Items on armour stands and item stands no longer lose their durability & upgrade level IF the world has not yet been loaded in the 1.0 update (We are however looking into a better fix for this so do not remove high level items (fish, weapons, armour, etc) from your item stands without using backups if you have been playing 1.0!)
• Fixed a crash that could trigger when players tried to access a zone that wasn’t loaded
• Fixed a problem with banlist and whitelist that made them only compatible with new IDs (e.g. V_123456789) even though they should work with old IDs too (e.g. Steam_123456789)
• There is now a popup message to make it more clear when you can receive achievements again after them being temporarily disabled
• Achievements can be now be opted into even if you have used devcommands or mods by the new devcommand 'yesiuseddevcommandsbutiwantmyachievementsanyway'
• It’s now easier to fit the Cart through the Timberwood Drawbridge
• Jotun Puffs and Magecaps no longer look pickable when they have been picked