The Blood of Dawnwalker isn’t out until tomorrow—September 2—but the reviews are up now, and generally speaking they’re pretty good. We gave it an 83% score in our review, calling it “a resolutely miserable horror RPG with some great ideas,” and that lines up spot-on with its enviable 83/100 aggregate rating on Metacritic. And that very positive response comes, quite literally, as a great relief to creative director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, who’s apparently been a little uptight about the whole thing.

“Waiting for the reviews to come in has been nerve wrecking to say the least, but they’re finally (mostly) here!” Tomaszkiewicz wrote on X. “Great relief, can’t wait to see you all play the game and to hear your thoughts! It’s a privilege to work with such a talented team

That nervous feeling probably isn’t entirely unfamiliar to Tomaszkiewicz, who would also know a thing or two about the ups and downs of varying critical reception. Prior to joining the team at Rebel Wolves, he spent years at CD Projekt working as a quest designer on The Witcher 2, and then lead quest designer on The Witcher 3; he was also a quest design director on Cyberpunk 2077, and game director on Gwent. Even so, I have no doubt that The Blood of Dawnwalker was especially intense, given his leading role on the project.

Tomaszkiewicz’s relief was greeted with congratulations from several of his former fellows, including Cyberpunk 2 associate game director Paweł Sasko, The Witcher 4 game director Sebastian Kalemba and level design lead Miles Tost, CD Projekt global comms director Marcin Momot, Witcher and Cyberpunk composer P.T. Adamczyk, and probably others I’ve missed.

Other developers, including former Kingdom Come: Deliverance director Daniel Vavra and Obsidian’s Mikey Dowling, also weighed in to offer their congratulations—the list is long, but I like to get in as many as I can because, quite frankly, with all the shit the industry seems to be stuck in these days it’s genuinely nice to see the people who actually make the games getting out to support each other.

The Blood of Dawnwalker is up for pre-purchase now on Steam and GOG, and is set to go live at 6 pm ET on September 2.