There are a few things that set Dune: Awakening apart from other survival-crafting MMOs. There’s the body temperature mechanic for a start, whereby spending too long exposed to Arrakis devastating weather will dehydrate you and eventually knock you out, so you’ll need to find shelter where possible. There’s also a mechanic where you can drain your enemy’s blood and either filter it into water or just drink it neat for hydration, which is gross. Maybe it’s the fact that it simplifies material gathering and base-building to an almost unprecedented degree, so you can build an entire desert fortress with just a handful of easily-gathered materials.
Or maybe, just maybe, the thing that really sets Dune: Awakening apart from other MMOs is the sheer sense of terror you feel trying to cross the open desert on foot. If you know anything about Dune’s setting you’ll know that the desert world of Arrakis is home to skyscraper-sized sandworms that produce Spice, a sought-after narcotic that enhances psychic and spiritual powers. Head onto the open sand and they’ll take notice, attracted by your vibrations. You need to be slow, steady, and stand perfectly still if you see one cleaving its way through the sand dunes nearby. Reach the shelter of a building or rocky outcrop and you’re safe, but it’s pretty terrifying the first time you see one burst out the sand and you can take in their gargantuan size. If one swallows you, you’ll permanently lose everything you carry and will need to craft everything all over again.
Initially you’ll have no choice but to risk the worms, as the game sends you on long-distance jaunts where you won’t see another player for ages. In fact, I forgot Dune: Awakening was an MMO altogether at times, playing it more like, say, Enshrouded. For example, after you first build a base and install it with low-level amenities, you’ll need to make sure you’re fully prepared for every journey before you leave.
But before we get too far into the weeds, how did we get here in the first place? And where is here? Awakening is set on the planet of Arrakis in an alternate timeline wherein Paul Atreides was never born, and certain major events from the novels never happened. As a result, the Fremen (Arrakis’ nomadic tribespeople) are gone, and the planet is torn apart by the Harkonnens and Atreides as they wage endless war across the sand. After being shot down in the desert, your agent gets caught up in the war, and must find traces of the Fremen while avoiding roving patrols of Sardaukar agents.
In the day you have better visibility and fewer threats to avoid, but at night you’ll need to watch out for Sardaukar patrols that will attack on sight. Of course, you’re the protagonist of an MMORPG as well, so you also have a Destiny to worry about. Multiple trials are littered throughout the campaign, each one requiring the use of an ability or skill that you won’t necessarily have used before.
Dune: Awakening also handles crafting in refreshing way. You’ll unlock knowledge of new items when you hit certain character or story milestones, and when you do you can just research the new item right in your menu without needing to craft a research station or fast travel back to your bae or a hub. Likewise, crafting is very simple: gather the necessary ingredients, of which there are usually only one to three types, and craft it without leaving the menu.
You’ll need a handful of items right away (which you’ll have to craft again if a worm gets you). You need a scanner to show you were to cut through material deposits with your cutteray, and you can also craft a special blood harvester, clothes, and weapons like knives and guns. Early on you’ll need to craft a whole stillsuit, which is Dune mythology allows you to recycle your own waste water to stay hydrated. Much later, nothing is out of bounds. You’ll outfit your base with defences, and craft vehicles for earth and sky to help avoid the worms and get around quicker. After over 25 hours I still had tons of stuff to research and unlock.
Perhaps Dune: Awakening’s weakest element is the combat. While gunplay is ok, enemies take a lot of shooting to put down, and ranged weaponry lacks essential feedback. What I do like is that, when facing an enemy with a kinetic shield, holding the attack button doesn’t charge a heavy attack, but a slow one. Holtzman Shields are designed to stop high-impact attacks such as ballistic rounds or piercing damage, so to get through one you need to move slowly. It makes for interesting fights in the movies and is fairly well-implemented in the game.
However, fighting itself, while real time, feels a little formulaic. I went with a melee-focused starting class (which can be changed later), and have had little trouble with most enemies. There’s really not a huge variety, either, which means unless I need something I’ve learned to avoid fights where possible. PvP is never forced either, so most of the time when you do come across another player you’ll just stand around awkwardly until one of you buggers off.
Dune: Awakening tells an original, interesting story within the established universe of the IP and does so well. Like I said, I kept forgetting it was an MMO at all, and in fact I wonder why it needs to be. It would have worked perfectly as a single-player survival RPG and even with the servers full so close to launch I haven’t run into that many other players out in the world.
It gets by perfectly well with the sense of atmosphere it creates. Arrakis is vast both horizontally and vertically, offering hidden secrets and challenges for those who seek them out. It’s a good-looking game, capturing the sheer scale and majesty of Arrakis and its terrifying worms while also staying true to what we’ve come to know as the aesthetic identity of the universe. It’s a thrilling action game as well as an engaging RPG, and while the combat doesn’t always feel satisfying, you can avoid it if you want to and stick to crafting and moving the campaign forward.
It’s always hard to predict how a new MMO will do in the market when there are so many popular, established competitors, but Dune: Awakening seems to have hit the sand running, delivering a refreshingly uncluttered experience with an intriguing story and setting. Why games in 2025 still persist in making me use a cursor when playing on controller I simply can’t answer, and there some definite glitches at work perhaps thanks to the online nature, but these are minor complaints in the shadow of Awakening’s accomplishments.
