Dune is a universe absolutely stuffed to the gills with quotes and sayings, enough that fans of the franchise can’t seem to resist bombarding you with them at any vaguely relevant opportunity. This would be more annoying if it weren’t for the fact that most of those quotes are genuinely insightful, poetically written, and raw as hell. I don’t plan to fill this review with Dune quotes because I’m sure if you’re here reading this, you’ve either heard enough of them for a lifetime or you’re about to while playing the game. Instead, let’s channel a few wise words as we match the approach that Dune: Awakening sets with its own relationship to the source material – drawing from the classics, but with a bit of a twist to… spice things up (I couldn’t resist).

“…I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. 

…I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.”

– Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville.

Funcom is no stranger to multiplayer games, and the bones of their previous titles – particularly the most recent Conan Exiles – are almost immediately recognisable in Dune: Awakening. If one had their pick of any intellectual property in which to set a survival game, they really would be hard-pressed to find a more appropriate one than Dune and its incredibly hostile world of Arrakis. A vast expanse of windswept sand, dotted with oases – not of water, that most precious currency on Arrakis – but spires and mountains that offer shelter from the merciless sandstorms that scour clean the desert, and from the devouring hunger of the sandworms that endlessly roam the dunes.

Civilisation seems to be a failed experiment here, found only in the scavengers’ camps, slaver citadels, and a few trade-posts that offer the respite of… oh, right. The recognisable corruption, capitalist greed and the militant factionalism of the Great Houses, all vying for power over the political landscape of the empire. As a place to live, Dune would be truly hellish. But a stark and brutal landscape is just what the doctor ordered here, and as a place to race ornithopters, massacre a horde of lawless bandits, and construct huge citadels of brutalist architecture, it’s the perfect fit.

‘Your mileage may vary’ is a phrase that really captures the Dune: Awakening experience. All of the greatest survival game hits are here, and you’ll probably love it if you enjoy game mechanics like the incremental progression that comes with grinding materials. Steadily working your way up a tech tree as you build new crafting stations and infrastructure. Outfitting yourself in sequential tiers of gear to gather bigger and better materials. Or murdering a truly obscene number of people and transmuting their blood into drinking water. And of course, we can’t forget the gameplay loop rising in popularity in the genre: quest-based progression! Some of the most vital research that you’ll need to thrive in the sands of Arrakis (iconic technology like the Fremen stillsuits, for example) require you to work through the main quest, the narrative arc that sees your character released from prison to enact the machinations of the Bene Gesserit and track down the Fremen (and where are the Fremen, anyway? Don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll find them soon).

The story might not be the primary draw for most players, but what those main quest missions lack in complexity, interesting gameplay or consistent pacing, they make up for in being technically present in the game. Perhaps that’s a little scathing – as survival games go, it offers more engaging storytelling than most – but its quality lies almost entirely in the quality of the existing Dune lore and universe, rather than proving itself by taking those excellent foundations and using the source material to make something faithful but new. The story isn’t what most of us are here for anyway, so let’s talk about gameplay. 

“Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair…

…the lone and level sands stretch far away.”

– Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

As with Arrakis itself, the gameplay experience of Dune: Awakening is a vast desert filled with rocky spires – high points of exploring stunning vistas, trading salvos of missiles in ornithopters or delving into wrecked spaceships to loot unique blueprints and materials while staying alert for other players who might want to cut you down and swipe your hard-earned spoils. And then, surrounding those high points of engaging gameplay, the open stretch of endless grind as each progressive tier in research and advancement demands more and more of our time in the pursuit of materials. This isn’t inherently a bad thing. I often found as much satisfaction in returning to my base with a cargo hold full of raw materials as I did in successfully pillaging a crashed spaceship or harvesting a spice eruption, but there’s just so. Much. GRIND.

The first few weeks of Dune: Awakening’s release have been dominated by a question: is it possible to play solo?” It’s clear from the material requirements, the time investment required for grinding, the PvP-focused nature of the Deep Desert and its faction-based endgame competition cycle that Dune: Awakening is balanced for group play. It’s far faster and easier to progress when your base is being fueled by a guild rather than alone, and two guns are vastly better than one in a PvP engagement, let alone three or four.

In a group, you and your team are wolves, moving as a squad to claim territory, hunt others and take the choicest materials for yourself. Leveraging your numbers allows you to progress fast and recover quickly, but it demands action to sustain your entire group. As a solo player, you never work with the confidence of a pack hunter. You’re a scavenger, not a hunter. You have no backup in a fight, so avoid fights. You can’t effectively hold territory, so scurry through the desert quickly and quietly. You might not be able to efficiently craft the best gear, but what you can get is often good enough to keep yourself going. If group players are wolves, then solo players are rats, thriving with timing and care. It might not be as glamorous as sweeping through the desert in a formation of assault ornithopters, but it can certainly be a fun time. So if you’re playing solo, remember these wise words and they’ll see you through;

“If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day…

…If you give a man a rat, you satisfy his rat desire.”

– A real asshole.

You know, I feel like we forgot something… wait a minute, where the hell are all the Fremen?!