Early on, while sprinting between rocky islands in Dune: Awakening’s desolate sandy seas, I began to wonder why it's taken so long for Frank Herbert’s fascinating world to be translated into a survival MMO PC game of this scale.

Making the most of the mythic beasts, warring factions, and an unforgiving setting, Funcom’s latest offering reimagines the core material, providing players the opportunity to step beyond the existing lore and carve out their own place amongst the stars. With so much to see and die as a result of, I still feel like I’m only scratching the surface of this monstrously sized expedition into the desert. But, despite the sizable journey ahead, one thing is for sure – I’m thoroughly enjoying the grind.

Dune: Awakening doesn’t take place in the Dune world you know from Herbert’s cult book, Denis Villeneuve’s cinematic duology, or David Lynch’s 1984 space opera. Instead, it’s set in an alternate timeline where Lady Jessica has a daughter instead of a son, and Duke Leto Atreides survives the assault on Arrakis, leading to an all-out war with the opposing Harkonnen dynasty. Without Paul Atreides and his Lisan al Gaib status, the Fremen are missing in action. Naturally, with all this drama, Arrakis has become a battleground over the most important resource in the galaxy – Spice.

Players enter this conflict as a prisoner, whose job is to find the Fremen people and awaken ‘the sleeper’. But before you dive into the many processes needed to uncover them, you first need to make some decisions about your character, namely what they look like and how they fit into the political landscape.

You’ll first get the chance to tweak the physical form of your character. There’s a decent variety of choices, from hairstyles to stature and tattoos, too. Naturally, I opted for a pre-distressed look, picking out murky blue eye makeup and some messy lipstick. Visual identity chosen, you’ll then pick some personality building blocks: your homeworld, social caste, and mentor.

Each option will provide you with alternative starting abilities and emotes. As someone who’s always wanted to use the Voice, I opted for a Bene Gesserit mentor and based myself in the frosty peaks of IX as a Bondsman. Sadly, it’s mainly your Mentor that factors into gameplay, with the other decisions acting more as role-playing flavor. Regardless, I was ready to feel the sand on my digital feet and test my survival mettle.

Fear is the grind killer

You aren’t just dropped into Dune: Awakening without a clue, and are run through a pint-sized tutorial sequence first. Here, you learn the basics of combat and survival, which amounts to scavenging morsels of water drops from plants and swiping at enemies with a glorified box cutter, before witnessing a sandworm gobble up the remains of your ship.

Emerging into the open sand, your workload is split between maintaining your hydration and shelter while branching out into the surrounding areas of the map in search of story missions. Much of my first hour was spent cowering in the shade, fearing for my life as I followed my objectives to earn some scrappy sun protection and a ranged weapon. Suddenly, I wasn’t so afraid, and I began assaulting enemy camps with my newfound confidence.

As you run between pockets of shade, scavenging for resources and completing objectives, you’ll naturally start to earn Skill Points and Intel Points that fuel your skills, research, and crafting abilities. Soon, instead of scrounging around for a morsel of water and clipping enemies with a pea shooter, you’ll be drinking the blood of your enemies and hammering targets with the improved arsenal at your fingertips. Dune: Awakening has all the hallmarks of a classic survival MMO. However, it’s the clever grapple between feeling brave and weak that kept me interested beyond the climactic opening.

It’s not all desert roses, though, and unfortunately, as I sought out more enemies, I ran into issues with the rudimentary combat. You can block and parry, as well as deliver quick, slow, and ranged attacks, which is fine, if not a little underwhelming. Your limited toolbelt, early on, isn’t complemented by the limited enemy variation, and many of the baddies you face look much the same, and frankly, don’t seem too smart either.

On one occasion, while taking out a duo of scavengers, the firing stopped abruptly mid-fight. As I sheepishly wandered around the corner, I noticed that the second scavenger was standing frozen, as if they’d forgotten I was there. As you push into more difficult districts on the map, there are complicating factors like shields, and your opponents have more diverse combat skills, though that does little to make the combat more enticing, and as of right now, it feels like fighting still needs some fine-tuning.

Thankfully, when the combat excursions start to get old, you can tackle story missions called the Trials of AQL, which arrive as alternate challenges that test your dexterity while explaining the history of the Fremen. Hidden amongst the craggy horizons, the trials felt like a carefully constructed extension of the lore, rewarding your attention with gear essential to survival long term. It’s clear Funcom cares about the material that the studio is adapting, and the involved and thoughtful Trials feel like proof of that.

Hope clouds observational skills

While exploration will take up the lion’s share of your time, base building is another important aspect to your survival in Dune: Awakening. Say a sandstorm warning pops up on your screen, and you need to quickly assemble a dwelling. All you have to do is craft a useful 3D printing gun and pick a safe spot to place your cover.

Here, external walls and flooring all snap together nicely, while the inside of your home requires a bit more finicky work to get things to fit just right. If you do run into problems, the system itself is quite forgiving, and it’s easy enough to modify your floor plan to fit more appliances if things get a little tight. You can technically build a shelter almost anywhere you’d like, and with the speed at which items respawn, plopping down your possessions in open sand is an obvious no-go.

This brings me to the real antagonist of Dune: Awakening. Beyond the periodic sandstorms, trigger-happy enemies, or unwavering thirst, are the more terrifying and possession-destroying sand worms or Shai-Hulud. Hidden underground in the open sands, the worms are attracted to your movements, which you can track via a friendly vibrations bar that appears at the center of your screen.

Simply put, the more you move in open sand, the more likely it is you’ll attract a sandworm. Once the bar turns red, it means your luck has run out and you need to sprint away to higher ground or risk losing everything you’ve worked so hard for. Short distances start to feel large, and I felt genuine pangs of fear as I tiptoed between the stone monuments that broke up this seemingly endless world.

Dune: Awakening looks solid in motion, but it isn’t always visually seamless, and there are plenty of frustrating bugs and bouts of texture pop-in that get in the way of the fun. Still, Dune’s desert landscape more than makes up for those small squabbles, and it's easy to get swept up in the carefully constructed details Funcom has embedded on Arrakis.

Visual accents like the billow of a water seal as you cut through it, or the sand particle texture on your windows, help to build the fantasy and commit your exploits to memory. Yet considering how large Dune: Awakening is, I’m sure there’s even more to uncover on my journey to ultimate power, and I’m excited to keep digging and discover more of these details.

Should I buy Dune: Awakening?

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Accessibility

You can access the settings from the pause menu while in-game, or at the bottom left of the main menu before you join a server. From the accessibility menu, you can toggle on and off camera shakes, controller rumble, and motion blur.

From this menu, you can also toggle on and off subtitles, choose the font size, as well as select an option to have previous subtitles on screen for a longer period of time. You can also tweak the gamma setting from this menu, too. Dune: Awakening allows you to rebind all your keys from the dedicated Keybinds menu.

Where audio is concerned, you can use a slider in the Audio submenu to tweak individual streams of sound (Master Volume, Music Volume in-game, Sound Effects Volume, Cutscenes Volume, Dialogue Volume, and Radio Volume).

How I reviewed Dune: Awakening

I played Dune: Awakening on Steam, using an Acer Predator XB271HU gaming monitor, a Logitech MX Master 3S mouse, and a Logitech G915 TKL gaming keyboard.

I used my external Creative Pebble V2 computer speakers and Audio Technica ATH-MX50X headphones plugged into a Scarlett 2i2 interface for sound. My gaming PC is powered by an RTX 3080 and an AMD Ryzen 9 3950X.

First reviewed June 2025