When I first heard of Dune: Awakening, I wasn’t quite clear on what it was. Is it an MMO? Is it a survival game? Is it an open world singleplayer RPG? The answer to all of those questions is yes. As you can probably tell, Dune: Awakening is an ambitious game. It promises to combine gameplay elements from several different types of games, all while being set in the universe of the acclaimed sci-fi series by Frank Herbert. However insane that amalgamation of gameplay genres may sound, all of it combined with the established world of Dune, creates an incredibly unique and immersive experience that has something for several types of players. Survive in the desert Dune: Awakening is set in an alternate timeline where Paul Atreides was never born. In this world, Duke Leto and Lady Jessica instead had a daughter named Ariste, House Atreides never falls to the Harkonnen, and most importantly, the Fremen have gone missing. This is where you come in. After creating your character (with a surprisingly detailed character creator, mind), you’re brought before a Reverend Mother who tasks you with the objective of finding the Fremen. Unlike most survival games, the story here is quite central to the gameplay loop until you get to the endgame, and it plays out in various cutscenes and dialogue screens that reminded me of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Despite all this, I wasn’t particularly invested in the story until its latter half, when more characters are introduced and the quests become a bit more interesting. The main questline sees you explore the deserts of Arrakis to find the eight Trials of Aql, which lead you on the path of the Fremen. While doing this, you’ll need to gather the resources required to craft equipment that will help you adequately survive in the desert. This survival side of the game makes its story take a while to move along. For reference, it took me just over 80 hours to finish the entire story questline. That’s not due to the length of the story itself, but because of the amount of time it takes to progress and find the objectives on your own. I didn’t mind this at all, though, as the real meat and potatoes of this game is the world itself. The environment is not your friend Arrakis is full of threats that can kill you if you’re not careful. One of these is the sun. Staying out in the sun too long will cause you to feel sunstroke, which will make you dehydrated and eventually lose health. To combat this, you need to stick to shade as much as possible. You also need to collect water either from plants or through siphoning blood from fallen enemies. Additionally, like we saw in the Dune films, the sandworms are an omnipresent threat when traveling through the open sand. The more vibrations you make when moving through the sand, the more likely a sandworm will show up to try to eat you. If it succeeds, you lose everything in your possession. This makes traversing the desert actually feel dangerous and like you’re going on an expedition. Any time I’d leave my base, I would think about what I needed to bring with me and what I could leave at home. I would also map out my route to try and stay on hard ground instead of open sand as much as possible to mitigate the risk of being eaten by a worm. You also have to be prepared for sandstorms that occur at random and can kill you and destroy any vehicles you have out in the open. There were a number of times where I’d be out exploring, realize a sandstorm was coming, and have to quickly find shelter in a cave or under another player’s base. All of this adds together to make the game feel truly immersive and almost like an Arrakis life sim. With the fusion of three very different styles of games, it’s not surprising that Dune: Awakening has a lot for you to sink your teeth into. If you like the questing that comes with MMOs and RPGs, along with the main story, there is a plethora of side quests to complete in each region of the map, with every NPC being fully-voiced and competently so. If you’re more into the survival aspect of the game, there are so many things to craft and areas to explore. You can easily split tasks up between group members, or do it all solo. And if you’re a Rust player itching for a new coat over your PvP survival, there’s that for you here too in the game’s endgame zone. Regardless of how you choose to play, one of the core aspects of the game is your home base. This is where you’ll craft all of your items, store vehicles, and in general is your place of shelter. The game lets you build your own base pretty much anywhere on the map. With this being an MMO, you’ll see player bases all around as you move through the world. It was cool to see new bases pop up around mine as new players started to join the game. I just wish there was a bit more variety in the types of materials you can use to build with, but I still enjoyed spending hours perfecting my home to show off to all the players passing by. A survival MMO Like pretty much any MMO, the game starts by making you select between five classes, each with their own skill tree. I started with the Bene Gesserit class, but the game lets you mix and match skills as you find the trainers for each class around the map. I ended up being a mix of Bene Gesserit and Trooper, manipulating enemies with the Voice, and then throwing a grenade to their faces. The cool thing about the skill system is you can change which skills you have equipped on the fly, allowing you to fine tune your playstyle for whatever encounter you’re heading into. The inclusion of class-based skill trees is a novel idea for the survival genre, but I honestly didn’t find much use out of a majority of the skills available. Enemy AI is not too sophisticated and they tend to be quite easy to kill, so I pretty much only needed to rely on my weapon to get through almost any encounter. It’s a shame because I would’ve liked to see more depth and distinction between the classes and playstyles. As far as the PvP goes, there isn’t much of it until you get to the endgame. In the main area of the game, Hagga Basin, PvP is only enabled at specific landmarks. Otherwise, you’ll need to travel to the Deep Desert for the full open world PvP experience, which you can only get to once you have late-game equipment. If you don’t want to dive into PvP at all, the Deep Desert is technically optional, but it’s important to note that certain endgame materials only spawn there. That means if you want to keep progressing past where the story takes you, you’ll need to spend some time in the Deep Desert gathering resources. If you are going to take on that challenge, be prepared for gank season. Without a guild, it’s tough to make it in and out without being targeted by a group of players looking to claim the desert for themselves. Similar to Rust, though, the Deep Desert gets a weekly wipe that destroys everything in it so that no one can get too powerful and ruin the fun for others. Clocking in to the game One important thing to note about Dune: Awakening is the time it asks of you. The game requires a lot of your time and attention, especially if you’re a solo player. Towards the endgame, the amount of materials required to craft a lot of the equipment you’ll want gets extensive. In addition to that, you need to make sure to keep your base powered enough to run all of your equipment. Also don’t forget to pay your taxes weekly – yes, you read that right. All of this is fine and dandy, even adding to the immersion if you plan on playing consistently for a while. If you end up jumping in and out over long stretches of time, though, be prepared to lose some of your hard work, because your base can deteriorate even in the PvE zone if you leave it long enough without power and don’t pay your taxes on time. On the performance front, Dune: Awakening runs fairly well on my RTX 4070 Super. Playing the game at high settings, I stayed mostly around 102 FPS with dips to the nineties in certain zones. I did experience, however, egregious glitches with the climbing in the game. Almost any time I’d climb a surface, there was some sort of rubberbanding that would cause me to fall or just not be able to climb at all. Dune: Awakening is a big game. Its wide array of content to explore makes the game a perfect one to boot up with a group, but it’s also entirely playable solo as long as you’re prepared for a slow grind. I’d argue taking it slow is what this game wants you to do, though. Dune: Awakening wants you to explore its many nooks and crannies, find the best location for your base of operations, and come into your own as you learn the ins and outs of Arrakis. Its survival systems and world mechanics did a lot to make me feel immersed in the desert planet. Some of those immersive mechanics might go a step too far if you’re not someone who wants to keep logging in consistently, but if you’re in for the long haul, Dune: Awakening has a lot here for pretty much any type of player. This review is based on a Steam code provided by the publisher. Dune: Awakening is available now on PC