Very immersive game. you can cook a well-done steak on your GPU while you play and the hot blasts of air from your PC fans truly make you feel like you are in the desert. keep a bag of sand by your desk and periodically toss handfuls of it into the air to really complete the experience :)

I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.

My father loves the dune universe. His read all the books since the 80s. He would be proud to see me wasting my life on this game.

The game is good. I'm not commenting on the PvP because I have little first-hand experience, but the PvE journey of 80h had been fantastic. Especially not having played Conan Exiles before. I'm not going to go into detail here, this is a great multiplayer survival platform and I suggest you read other reviews if you want to know if the mechanics, world and gameplay loop are for you. What is not good is Funcom's take on the Live Service business model and it's already showing. After Friday's server issues, Rhea - Legg lost most bases. In our corner of the map, every base for miles around was destroyed. Only frameworks left. Of 10 bases, just one even had a claim left at the end of it. Chests gone, vehicles gone, everything except character progress gone. So basically my group of 4 had lost ~300h of collective progress. When asking (not demanding, not being a **** about it) on Discord if there would be rollbacks, I was laughed out of the room by a community mod. As expected, players droolingly brought out the "you're just a soft casual" lines. Since the days of Ultima Online and later EvE and countless hardcore mode installations, I have lost more progress in games than others have played, that's not even a flex. I have no issue with ingame consequences and feel like these are generally lacking today. But here's the deal: In each of these prior instances I KNEW what I was getting into. The games clearly communicated the danger of losing everything. Losing everything to server issues after having paid extra cash for early access (like a chump) in designated safe PvE zones that were never intended to be destroyed like this, that's something different. Devs not commenting on rollbacks or even acknowledging the massive base destruction on several Sietches, that's something else. Then jokingly passing the blame to players, trying to veil your shitty server-destroying patch in roleplay with "hurr durr, it was Shai Hulud", that's just rude. Not to mention that all tickets created via the ingame help function have so far been completely ignored without even an answer for anyone I know from my Sietch that submitted one. This game does not respect your time and frankly doesn't give a damn. If you're fine with what I've described above, by all means, buy this game and you'll thoroughly enjoy it. But I can't.

Normally not a fan of survival games and normally don't write reviews, but I'm gonna make an exception for this one. From gathering to combat to base building to something as simple and stupid as managing my water or deciding what time of day I should attempt to make a trek across the desert, this game really makes me feel like John Dune.

I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.

May Thy Keyboard Chip and Shatter

From a solo player's perspective it's alright for the first ten hours, but I strongly recommend you have a group or plan to join others. As a strictly solo player things escalate very quickly and resources become really hard to gather in the quantities you need without assistance. I like the setting and the mechanics behind combat (shields are fascinating) but I find myself no longer motivated to play because gathering Aluminum seems to consume all of my time and it took forever to craft Steel before that. The end-game is strictly PvP as well, so yeah, it's not a game for people like me, which is why I'm not recomending it. It isn't bad by any stretch, it's just not a game made for people that want to play a solo PvE experience.

In my first 100 hours of playtime i would never have imagined i would be giving this game a negative review, but here i am. The game starts in hagga basin, which is your pve survival gameplay area. You go through the typical loop of gathering resources, taking care of a few survival meters (in this case water and heat), building a base and advancing to the next tier of resources. The game's flavour is its dune atmosphere and sandworms that can eat you and everything you have on you if you anger them too much. You can build bikes, buggys and ornotopthers(helicopters that can glide basically) and you use your vehicles inventory to be able to gather large amounts of resources so you can build better equipment and vehicles. Overall your typical survival loop with a good pacing. In addition to these the game has skill trees like an rpg and you can customize your character to be more efficient in various combat and non combat tasks. There are multiple camps of enemies and various labs and shipwrecks to fight, raid and loot. You will likely spend dozens of hours here having a lot fun. Homever, the game does not leave you with fond memories and a good time. Any amount of good will i fostered in hagga basin towards the developers have been destroyed when i got to the last tier of progression, the deep desert. If someone told me that the endgame for the best survival game i have played in a good while would be a very bad adaptation of helicopters with missiles against other players i would not take that person seriously. Yet here we are. But it's worse, remember how i said you use your vehicles inventory, you need that inventory to be able to make any meaningfull progression, and in the deep desert, it will take around 5-10 mins just to get to where you need to be able to gather. The design is as follows: You can either arm your ornotopther(you have to fly everywhere in the deep desert) with missiles or you can put a storage module on it. Guess what happens when someone attacks you while you are trying to gather? You have no way to fight back and there is a good chance you will be shot down from the sky before you can get to safety, resulting in the loss of your vehicle. The gankers are in no danger and have nothing to lose except a little bit of time chasing you. Essentially funcom created a large pve playerbase who got practically addicted to the game in hagga basin, only to feed them to a few gankers(sorry but this is not pvp) at the endgame so a very small minority of players can have a laugh here and there at the majority's expense. No one likes this "pvp", not the pve players, not the pvp players because lets face it - its just helicopter missiles all day with the skill trees being redundant, only the gankers i told you about want the system to stay as it is. Yet the developers are firm in their stance that this is their vision for the game and that is the biggest reason i lost my good will against funcom. The pve players are being bullied and gaslit in the game and in the forums, "this is a pvp game" "if you dont like it leave it" "git gud" etc. The developers are not better: "You don't HAVE to engage in PvP, but you run the risk of meeting hostile players. There are currently no plans to change this for the Deep Desert." I think this is as rude and insensitive as they can be while still making a public statement. Forums and discord are filled with people that voice their discontent on this topic and i think they will soon take the advice and "leave it because they dont like it". I would have liked to remember the game as it is in hagga basin, but the deep desert and the developers behind it have tarnished that image. Edit: Apparently this review gathered a lot of attention and i need to adress some comments that keep reoccuring. I spent enough time in the deep desert to build a large spice refinery and thousands of plastinium, i have played a lot of this game like an addict. On a pure dollar per hour standpoint this game is worth it. I also spent 10s of thousands of hours on world of warcraft and there have been large periods of times where i thought the game was bad. Steam has a filter function for reviews, you can check how the overall score drops when you filter by people with over 100 hours. I am not alone in this. About recent changes, everytime an announcement or change is made people will come and declare this review obsolete. Fine. If you want the latest opinions steam also has a filter for that. Spoilers: Review score keeps dropping as time goes on. I would very much like it if the game got to a point that will make me want to change my review to positive and i expect it will. I just dont think it will be some change to deep desert. I dont think deep desert is salvageable. It will take time and effort but i am hopefull. While i dont like being called names, i like that steam allows people to say what they want to say, those people are proving one of the points i made in this review. I want to add that i despise all attempts to get people to refund or review bomb this game, neither the game nor the developers deserve such treatment. Please make your own judgement and give your honest feedback. I put some white space between pharagraphs and i hope it makes reading easier.

instead of building a thopther, I slingshot my character across the desert dunes using a grapple hook and suspension belt while looking down at the poors traversing the sands on foot as if I were Sky Hulud

Let me tell you about my first death after 15 hours I had just seen a ship crash into the open sand not far from me—smoke, fire, a beautiful “go check that out and loot everything” invitation. Naturally, I obliged. I get to the ship and It’s a billion degrees and I am in the middle of NOWHERE. I’m sweating, and I’ve got a backpack full of shiny, mysterious loot I definitely don’t understand but KNOW it’s valuable. After scooping up everything that I saw, I hear the rumble. The sandworm vibration reader is RED. I turn around and see in the distance a sandworm the size of my hopes and dreams, and it's hungry. I panic. My brain goes full static. I forget the button to summon my speed bike. Cue me mashing keys like a chimp in a flight simulator. Eventually, the bike shows up. I jump on, take off at full throttle, wind in my face, screaming triumphantly… for about ten seconds. Then I get swallowed mid-‘FUUUUUUUUU' 10/10, would panic-loot and become worm food again.

TLDR: Game is reasonably priced and fun if you like PvP, but if you prefer playing solo or with friends or with mods then wait to see if the devs release the server files, or just buy Conan Exiles instead. The story is currently unfinished, and be wary the Season Pass which is actually just three skin packs, one small quest, and one new map next year. Warning: in order to play this game you are forced to agree to an arbitration clause in their EULA, which is only shown to you after buying the game but before playing. can be previewed on the store page under the tags section. I prefer playing games solo and I spent many hours in their previous game, Conan Exiles, which allowed players to play solo or co-op within the game itself and change a lot of intricate settings to customize the game how you like, and they also released server files before the launch of the game so that anyone could set up their own private server. That's why I was disappointed to see that the devs are currently refusing to release the server files, likely because they consider this game as an MMO, despite it being almost identical to Conan Exiles or ARK which are survival crafting games and not MMOs, same as Dune. Dune Awakening has three maps to travel between, sure, but Conan Exiles players and ARK players know that it's not that hard to set up a private clustered server that allows travel between maps. Conan Exiles has 70 players per server while Dune Awakening only has 40 players per server until the endgame desert area which only has 100 players maximum per instance, while real MMO games usually have their player limit in the thousands. When travelling between the maps you will be placed in a queue, and since you need to visit the city often for quests, you will often be put back in a long queue every time you want to hand in a quest, which sounds like a nightmare for players during release. I wasn't planning on buying this game at launch due to the lack of private servers and mods, but a few days ago they announced that they are partnering with three server hosting websites to allow players to rent a private server. However these servers still need to be arbitrarily connected in two of the three maps, justified by the devs by saying they didn't want players to be missing part of the whole experience of playing the game. We are the customers, please let us play the game how we want. Besides, as an Australian, only one of the three available server rental websites has Australian servers, so I don't even get a choice of which website to rent from. It's already crazy that I'm being forced to rent a server despite having the capacity to self-host, but the restrictions make it feel even worse. Besides, I guess you're also coerced into paying for the server for many months because once you stop playing you would likely lose your character and all of their progress. The rented private servers also are missing a lot of the settings that made playing Conan Exiles so customizable and fun, instead there are only three settings that can be changed. In their last game it felt good to increase the amount of resources gathered so you could skip the grind if you wanted, and I had a lot of fun flying around and making bases in god mode, but it won't be possible to play the game the way you want anymore unless the devs take private servers more seriously. Apart from custom settings, mods were also a great part of making Conan Exiles fun, but if the devs never release the server files then it's likely that we'll never see any mods made for Dune Awakening, which would be a huge shame because mods significantly extend the lifespan of a game like this. Devs, if you see this, please genuinely reconsider your choice to disallow self-hosted private servers. We don't mind how difficult it is to set up a clustered server, and we don't mind missing out on part of the experience of players in the city or PvP in the desert. We love your games and prefer when we can tinker with the settings to change reource rates and other things, and your dedicated community loves making mods and sharing them with everyone online. Please release the server files someday, hopefully sooner than later. Until then, I will begrudgingly rent a server from the only provider available just to enjoy your wonderful game by myself during the release hype, but I obviously can't reccomend that to anyone else.

Great foundation, but PvP is not truly optional

Hours Played: 69 hours Recommended: No, with caveats I've spent nearly 70 hours in Dune: Awakening, and there’s a lot to like. The atmosphere is immersive, the crafting and base-building systems are well thought out, and the setting captures the Dune universe in a way that’s genuinely exciting. However, I feel misled by one of the game’s core claims: “PvP is always optional.” This simply isn't true in practice. While you can play much of the early and mid-game without engaging in PvP, the final tier of progression—The Deep Desert—is locked behind PvP-flagged zones. This means if you want access to top-tier materials, gear, and content, you must enter PvP areas, even if you're a solo or PvE-focused player. As someone who plays mostly solo and enjoys PvE, I was hoping to fully experience the game without being forced into competitive PvP. Unfortunately, that’s not possible right now. The game’s structure funnels everyone into these PvP zones where you lose your inventory (outside of equipped items and maybe hotbar) if they want to progress or “finish” their build. That’s not optional—that’s mandatory with extra steps. If the developers want to respect all playstyles—especially those of PvE or casual players—they need to provide alternative endgame paths or PvE versions of the Deep Desert. Until then, players like me will always hit a wall. I still think Dune: Awakening has massive potential, and I’ve genuinely enjoyed a good chunk of it—but if you're buying this under the impression that PvP is entirely optional, you should know: it isn’t. My “Not Recommended” rating is based solely on the current lack of PvE-friendly endgame options. It’s not for me—and I know I’m not alone in feeling that way. That said, this could absolutely change if the developers add proper PvE modes or enable private servers to operate independently, without tying them to the shared, PvP-focused world structure.

Built a base. Mined some ore, Killed some guys. Got eaten by a worm. Lost all my gear. Built another base. Made some more gear. Did some legal drugs. Got eaten by a worm. Got a free bike. 10/10

Pass on this one for a couple of reasons: 1. Infrastructure is weird. Servers are limited to 40 players being online at a time, all the rest get in a queue and just wait for slot to free up, which was around 40 to 80 minutes. Yes, you leave your own server when entering social hub village or DD, so you get back in a queue just after handing a few quests. 2. Player bases are EVERYWHERE. People are going for optimal routes and plant their bases en masse next to resource dense spots, trading posts and camps/stations. Which results in you navigating through not only landmasses, but also all those atrocities built and hoping that resources are there and enemies are not all dead (they are, give up). 3. Since players occupy zones next to quest related areas - you pretty much never see enemies and bosses. Considering that the respawn rate for stations is around 30 minutes - good luck handing in those quests. Why stations are not closed off dungeon-like instances per player/group - is beyond my understanding. 4. Building aspect. Building bases gives a mixed feeling in all honesty. You are not able to see support level of ground around you and sometimes mid-building the foundation you can find out that around 30% of your claimed area does not provide "enough support" to place buildings. And that place would be somewhere next to a small rock or on a perfectly even ground. But 5 meters away, where you have hills on top of hills - yeah, perfect, you can build away. 5. Vehicles. It's janky, incredibly janky. Hills and bumps at high speeds are horrible and considering that the maps consist 90% of them - good luck not flipping your bike 20 times. Even smallest rocks could send you flying. Temps don't drop steadily but by 3-5 degrees at a time, which just messes with me. The driving in general doesn't feel fleshed out. And before you say "muh immersion" - no, you can be immersed into universe AND have enjoyable mechanics that don't punish you for trying to just enjoy the game. The status of your components on a bike doesn't seem to affect anything, except show how many more hits it could take (wear and tear?). 6. Map. It's huge. It's mostly sand. It's annoying. Yeah, to get the feeling of giant sand planet is nice and all, but it evaporates in 1 hour, when you realise that you spend 50% of your gaming time just getting to places, 30% of time looking for specific rocks/ore/water (your character is very thirsty, I literally depleted full bar of water while standing in place, building a base for 5 minutes, amazing) and only 20% actually doing quests/engaging in fights. I've spent around 20 hours in an open beta, so I was prepared to run through a tutorial area into "main game". Upon realising that it's just a never-ending cycle of grind without any significant changes between zones I had to stop and think. Giant player bases ruining any possible immersion, as well as people in PVP with 8 weapons in slots (yup, that's how it was in books for sure, Hark soldiers with 7 karpov rifles and a crysknife rolling up to a fight). I was left with a question "why do I play this game?" and the answer was easy - "Because it's Dune". I wanted to be hyped for a game like this for a long time. I love the Dune universe and it was a bigger selling point for me than I cared to admit, but take it out of this game and I would not play it, let alone pay for it. Because it felt just like any other MMORPG that came out 5-10-15-20 years ago. Honestly, nothing changed in a formula over the years, it feels like an attempt to milk customers as much as possible with same product in different visual setting. Utterly gutted and disappointed. Thanks to Steam for issuing a refund, since sitting in a queue or staring at "compiling shaders" bar should never count as a "playtime".

I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere

**Dune: Awakening – All Spice, No Soul** Over 400 hours in beta and release. I saw potential once. I swear I did. But like water on Arrakis, it evaporated fast. And saying this hurts my soul, I wanted a Dune game MMO since Star Wars Galaxies. Combat used to feel tight. You could stagger enemies, block, dodge, and survive a swarm with skill. Now you get one dodge, one block, a sad little counter, and then you're wheezing for stamina while trying to bandage... which gets canceled if a gnat sneezes on you. Testing Stations? Less “tactical encounter,” more “knife jugglers, machine gunners, and grenade clowns all at once.” It's like being mugged by a Cirque du Soleil cast in body armor. And the Deep Desert? Oh, you'll love it. A massive, mostly empty map where all the good loot hides behind PvP gates. Bring a squad and top-tier gear or get farmed by the players who got there first. It’s less *Dune* and more *Doom* (but with worse odds). Crafting? Fun at first. Then the materials list starts to look like a tax form and the rewards stop being worth the grind. Oh, and spice harvesting? Used to be a thing. Now it’s another PvP carrot you’ll never reach if you enjoy solo play. And then there’s the Landsraad. Sounds awesome, right? A political system where player factions shape the server by fulfilling tasks for House Atreides or House Harkonnen. In practice? It’s just another grindfest. Deliver vehicles. Capture control points. Fight off PvP squads camping objectives like spice-addled vultures. Instead of diplomacy and manipulation, the “council of Great Houses” is a glorified scoreboard with extra chores. It feels uninspired and unreflective of the IP of Dune. I bought the Deluxe Edition thinking I was getting the next big survival game. What I got was a beautiful PvP loot-delivery simulator with fewer features than the beta had. **Pros:** * It’s pretty * The sand doesn’t crash your PC * Early crafting is kind of fun **Cons:** – Melee combat now feels like slapping a worm with a wet sock – PvE becomes punishment ritual – Deep Desert is an empty PvP meat grinder (You're the meat) – Crafting gets tedious fast – Solo players? Lol. Good luck – Spice is only part of the end game – Landsraad system is just PvP in a fancy hat and unavailable until end game pvp – Completely misses the vision and soul of *Dune* **Final verdict:** Gorgeous game. Terrible design. Should’ve stayed asleep.

Just make PvE servers and all-PvP servers, you're trying to mix two playerbases where half don't want to interact with the other, and the other half want to forcibly interact with the first half to avoid having to actually interact with themselves (I wouldn't want to interact with them either tbf). It seems like the devs knew a PvP game would sell poorly, so they setup an elaborate rugpull where you get 85% of the way through the resource tree making you feel like you need to go into an empty, boring flatland in order to see the game through. Unlike 80% of the playerbase I actually checked out the deep desert and it was before the changes, and when I got there the entire chat was just whiny manchildren that sit there all day stroking themselves and accusing each other of being unemployed (they all are). You put me into a position to where I actually need to sit in the PvP area for longer because nobody just gets a kill and moves on. They either wipe your ornithopter that takes ~3 hours just to process the raw ore for, or if they happen to catch you on open sand they summon a sandworm that wipes out everything you built and have on you while watching like creepy psychopaths that pulled the wings off of a butterfly to feed it to a snake. These are not people that need to be catered to. I never once died in the deep desert before the changes, but I also had to play like a complete coward because you either can have missiles on your thopter or storage racks. I had to be forced to choose whether I could defend myself (because your player build doesn't matter, everything is just thopter combat) or carry more than 3 nodes worth of ore (because the inventory amount is pitiful and there's zero upgrades for it). After the changes I managed to find a whopping 4 nodes in the PvE area, so what's the point? The changes feel passive-aggressive and pointless. The first part of the game was a lot of fun, and full of tension on its own without having to worry about being some jobless latent serial killer's pet torture project for the hour, but now my options are to wander a boring flat plain for hours on end, or get pushed into a tinier area with the same amount of weirdos. This idea that people are supposed to spend every waking minute of their free time in a video game is sad and dystopian, plenty of people are happy with buying a game, seeing the content, and then moving on, and the ones that aren't are a sad vocal minority. Nobody seems happy anywhere, so I'll just not play the game and recommend that anyone who doesn't want some forevergame substitute job do the same.

Game started out great. Felt very much like an open world destiny. It does have it's bugs and needs improvement but even then I had a blast... Till Endgame. I will be honest and say I am not a fan of forced pvp but that isn't even the real issue. The endgame literally switches game modes completely and goes for a guild wars fighter pilot sim. The open pvp dessert will just be filled with bored guild/groups with all the endgame goodies waiting to bully some poor sap who decided to venture alone or with a friend looking to progress being outnumbered and gunned. For what it was till endgame it was great, even having to go to pvp zones for some loot but the endgame it falls flat. I never understand games that give so much advantage to groups and not just a balance for all players, Forget about skill, This game is about how big and sweaty your guild is.

The game just isn’t worth the money. The only reason I’m enjoying it at all is because it’s set in the Dune universe — otherwise, it’s completely underwhelming across the board. Base building feels clunky, movement is laggy, and animations drag on far too long, making your character feel sluggish — especially in melee combat. I played a lot during the beta and honestly, nothing really improved. The whole "finished product is a different build" excuse doesn't hold up. Performance has actually gotten worse — I’m getting about 30 FPS less than in beta. Is it because of the anti-cheat system? Hard to tell, especially since PvP is practically non-existent anyway. And then there's melee combat — which, in the Dune universe, is crucial. Yet here it feels clumsy and unresponsive. Imagine charging $80 / 300 PLN for a game set in a world where melee combat defines survival... and failing at delivering it properly. The fact that the devs are active on Discord is great, but for me, that's nowhere near enough to justify the price tag.

Imagine Dupe exploits by disconnecting in 2025 game is cooked EDIT: The Patch fixed duping, but they didnt do anything about the already duped items, so glad the endgame is all about resource scarcity. woudnt be a problem if it was pve and people ruin their own game, nobody would care. but having this tryhard rust mode endgame pvp for toxic little sweats about rare resources... They dont care if they loose a MK6 Vehicle, because they got Materials for a thousand more, while everybody else needs to grind for a decent amount of time to replace one. Landsraad even more useless than before, when they can just complete all the "hand in XY house item" with duped materials endgame pvp is not skill based, but just a poor mans rust mode in planes endgame pve doesnt exist bUt HeY iTs A lIVe SErVicE gAmE.... (which today is mostly an excuse to release an unfinished product) Hagga Basin T1-T5 is a good game tho, but forget the rest until they add new content

I play this game with a friend and i mine for the materials while he crafts a base out of them. Together we minecraft

Bene Gesserit is a racial slur on my race as a Jew. i won't play antisemitic games, i am willing to exchange this for Dire Wolf's everdell. Been a Jesuit. Same as star wars : Jedi = Judah. You antisemites can go straight to hell for all i care. Enjoy your freedom for now.

edit-i decided to keep going, although the sandworm situation was a huge setback, it only took about 3 hours to recover almost to where i was. That being said, i think a sandworm death later on into the higher mineral tiers will be alot harder to recover from, hopefully it dosent happen again. i was enjoying this game up until i had spent 7 hours crafting item sets and getting my equipment all set and then i get hit with server lag and a sandworm eats me, which i thought at first no big deal until it tells me ive lost literally everything ive worked for. im not about to start over from scratch. 100$ in the trash can. i get offered a bike in return. forget that bike how about all the gear i spent all that time gathering resources for. the bike took 5 minutes to make. offering me a bike back was a spit in the face. Very disappointing that for a first time death to a unreliable and sketchy sandworm mechanic that my character is stripped. Your going to lose new players in droves this way. its important to be user friendly if you want to attract people to the game. A lose everything penalty in the first 10 hours of gameplay is going to leave a sour taste in alot of peoples mouths.

I boofed spice and spoke to worm jesus, 10/10