You can trade in your enemy's teeth to "bend" time in vampire RPG The Blood of Dawnwalker, care of some really horrible Tooth Fairies

Upcoming dark fantasy action RPG The Blood of Dawnwalker will allow players to bend its strict time limit by harvesting teeth from defeated enemies and trading them to grotesque tooth fairies. Developed by Rebel Wolves and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment, the 14th-century European vampire adventure centers on a time-sensitive narrative system where every decision carries weight.

Bending Time with Collected Enamel

In The Blood of Dawnwalker, players control Coen, a character who lives as a human by day and a vampire by night. Coen faces a strict 30-day countdown to save his family from a boss vampire. While time normally progresses through chrono-locked segments driven by player choices, players can manipulate this countdown by interacting with entities known as the Sanzhana.

According to reporting from Rock Paper Shotgun, the Sanzhana serve as the game's tooth fairies. Far from traditional depictions, these creatures are chubby, half-human moth-like entities with blue skin and whispering wings, shown in gameplay footage harvesting enamel from cadavers lying inside rings of red mushrooms. By trading harvested teeth to the Sanzhana, players can alter the flow of time.

“They allow you to play with the time limit, because there are a lot of myths around pixies where they get to do some time-bending stuff,” Creative Director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz said. “And for us, since our game is so heavily revolving around the time system, this was something cool to play around with.”

Systemic Exceptions in an Open World

The game's open-world structure features two distinct gameplay loops that leverage Coen's dual nature across day and night cycles. Balancing human strengths during the day with vampiric abilities at night forces players to carefully manage their schedule within the 30-day limit.

Introducing the Sanzhana provides a deliberate way to break the core time rules. “I think it's very cool when you do systemic stuff to have exceptions from it and some ways that impact it in ways you didn't anticipate,” Tomaszkiewicz said. “It creates this feeling that something unexpected might happen at every turn and there are still secrets to be found.”

The Blood of Dawnwalker is scheduled to launch on September 2, 2026.

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• Rock Paper Shotgun Hero image: https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/sanzhana-blood-of-dawnwalker.jpg?width=690&quality=85&format=jpg&auto=webp