Pre-order The Blood of Dawnwalker or wait?
It's $69.99, there's no pre-launch discount, and it's the first game from a studio that doesn't exist in your head yet. Here's the honest case for both, so you can decide without the hype doing it for you.
Update, Sep 25, 2026 — this one's settled
The game came out on September 2 and landed well: 87% positive across 15,434 English Steam reviews, an 86 on OpenCritic. The price hasn't moved either — still $69.99, no discount in three weeks. So if you were in the "wait for reviews" camp, the reviews are in. Everything below is kept as it was written before launch.
Standard edition on Steam as of Sep 25, 2026. No discount since launch — checking the Steam page again before you pay is a fair move either way.
The case for pre-ordering
The pedigree is real: Rebel Wolves was founded by Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, who co-directed The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, and the team is full of CD Projekt veterans. The Blood of Dawnwalker is a day/night vampire RPG in 14th-century Europe — human by day, dawnwalker by night — and the studio has said the main story runs roughly 30-40 hours, a deliberate break from 100-hour bloat. If that pitch is exactly what you've been waiting for since The Witcher 3, you already know you're buying it. Pre-ordering costs you nothing extra over launch day.
One more point in favor: the 60fps day-one patch saga showed the team responds to feedback fast. That's not nothing when you're spending $70 on a first game from a new studio.
The case for waiting
$70 for a debut from a brand-new studio is the definition of "wait for reviews." The 30fps mess also tells you something: the console launch plan was rougher than it should have been, and day-one patches are exactly the kind of thing that makes launch-day impressions unreliable. If reviews land before or right at release, a week's patience answers most of the open questions.
Length is worth flagging too: early studio statements pointed at 30-40 hours for the main story, but reporting closer to launch (Push Square via the game's fan subreddit) suggests fuller playthroughs can run 50-70 hours. Nobody's arguing it's short — the argument is just about how long "long" is before you commit.
And the community is split on this exact question. Reddit threads on r/gaming and r/DawnwalkerOfficial are full of "day 1 buy or wait for a price drop" debates, with most people leaning "wait to see how it reviews." That's not a red flag — it's just a signal that you wouldn't be leaving a party early by sitting this one out for a week.
The honest call
- Pre-order if: the day/night vampire hook is your exact genre, you've got Witcher 3-shaped expectations, and a $70 day-one experience sounds fine to you.
- Wait if: a new studio's first game at full price makes you pause, or you want to see the 60fps patch actually hold up in real reviews before paying.
FAQ
- Was there a pre-order discount? Never one — and there's still no discount, as of Sep 25, 2026.
- Are there other editions? Not spelled out in official sources — the Steam page currently shows the standard edition at $69.99 (checked Sep 25, 2026).
- Is it multiplayer? No, single-player only.
- Can I get a refund? Steam's standard window applies: 2 hours of playtime, 14 days from purchase.