The Blood of the Dawnwalker, the vampire-themed fantasy game from a team of former Witcher developers, is shaping up to be one of 2026’s exciting-looking new original games. Its director, Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, said in an interview that he doesn’t think some of its new ideas would have been possible at CD Projekt Red.
Tomaszkiewicz was asked by IGN if he thought he could have made the game’s “narrative sandbox” and time-loop elements at CD Projekt Red or another large studio, and he said, “I think I couldn’t.”
“When you have the big companies which have established IPs, it’s really hard to change something or do something really innovative because it’s always about being same-but-new,” he said. “You already know the playerbase wants almost the same, but new, in comparison to doing something really fresh and new.”
The Blood of the Dawnwalker has a time mechanic where players have 30 days and 30 nights to save the protagonist’s family from vampires. As for the “narrative sandbox” structure, the game has no traditional main quest, but allows players to complete quests in any order.
Tomaszkiewicz co-directed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Cyberpunk 2077 before leaving CD Projekt Red to start his own team, Rebel Wolves. He said Cyberpunk 2077 represented a bold new idea for CD Projekt Red, and now that he has his own team, he has the freedom to “make our own mistakes and our own decisions of crazy stuff we want to create.”
“Our mission should be to deliver not only a cool experience, which is ‘safe’ because we know how to do that, but we should also explore these areas which we are not experts in yet, and to try to deliver some fresh feelings,” Tomaszkiewicz said. “Obviously here the risk is bigger, but I think that it’s worth it because later on you will be remembered in the industry, because you created something really new. Maybe in the future some other people will try to do the ‘narrative sandbox.'”
Also in the interview, Tomaszkiewicz said part of his ambition starting a new studio was to make new, original games as opposed to what he called “same-but-new” games.
“When you release the one game and it is a success, people want more of this, but they don’t want you to change it because they love this particular idea,” he said. “And obviously when you have these stakeholders or the stock market and so on, there are the needs from those sides and it’s quite hard to please everyone.”
The Blood of the Dawnwalker releases on September 3 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. For more, check out the PC system requirements.