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In a post-Valheim and Sons of the Forest world, Dune Awakening could easily be your favourite new survival game, on one major condition - preview

Hearing a member of the press get eaten by a worm was my first highlight of 2025.

Dune Awakening preview header custom
Image credit: VG247

I sat on a gamer chair for roughly six hours straight earlier this month, playing Dune Awakening with a room full of other journalists, and quickly found myself gripped by Funcom's depiction of an Arrakis that could have been, if only pesky Paul Atreides wasn't around.

In that time, I flew through the game's introductory zone, built a terrible base on a rock too far from an NPC outpost, and drove circles around press who hadn't built a vehicle as fast as mine. I came away with many questions and a few concerns, but remain convinced there's some real Spice hidden in the sands of this game.

Dune Awakening is an open world, MMO survival game, from the creators of the smash-hit Conan Exiles (which loads of normal people loved), Anarchy Online (which your dad may have liked), and The Secret World (which I and roughly 100 other people still love).

Funcom is a studio with a history of mixed financial success, sure, but also of trying out weird, unconventional ideas in earnest. As such, the developers there have brought the same ambition to the universe of Dune, itself a bizarre sci-fi IP currently sitting pretty atop modern pop culture. It's lined up to be a big hit, as long as it's fun to play. So is it?

In short, yes! Dune Awakening shares much of the Conan Exiles DNA that made that game an endearing survival game, as well as some fresh ideas to better immerse the player in Arrakis. The unique qualities of Dune permeate the game in such a way that conveys a deep understanding of the source material and films, while actually making surviving said world an enjoyable experience. There is a hydration metre, political intrigue, and giant worms - what more could you want! But at no point in my limited play time was interacting with the game's overlapping intricacies overly frustrating. The team at Funcom has managed to strike a good balance between making a true and honest Dune experience, without making me want to claw my eyes out.

The act of completing a mere side quest - or contract, to use the game's parlance - is arduous. You must dart between shaded areas, careful not to stay too long on the sand lest attract a worm to your location. Resources are scarce and scattered across rock formations, which act as islands out of the reach of these gargantuan threats. When faced with enemies, a single stab or shot deals significant damage, which can only be healed with bandages that must be looted or crafted from scarce plant fibers. The early hours of Dune Awakening is a saga comprised of many such journeys, all of them treacherous.

Action can be roughly split into ranged and melee combat, though players can use The Voice to turn the tables. Shooting folks seems strong at first, but once you run into an enemy with a shield you're dragged into an upfront confrontation, stunning enemies with combos or parries before slowly pushing your blade into the shield for big damage. I found myself thoroughly engaged by this part of the game, even though I'm somewhat concerned about whether or not shooting dusty dudes will remain as fun 20, 40, 100 hours in. One hopes the variety lies in mixing and matching skills and abilities, which the game has no shortage of.

Combat in Dune Awakening
Combat can get quite slow, not in a bad way mind you. Deliberate is the word for it. | Image credit: Funcom

It's not all violence, there is respite, too. Building a home base is a core part of Dune Awakening. Your base exists on a shared overworld with other players, so as you explore you'll spot many boxes and vaguely phallic abodes spread all over the place. When it comes to building your own, it's a process of ramping up your own production facility of sorts, able to create an increasing number of gadgets, gear, and gizmos to help you in your journey. You can even copy your base for easier relocation, which is dead handy especially when you move to a new zone. Going out to gather resources, bringing them home and refining them into new stuff is a gameplay loop Funcom has become exceptional at over the years, and Dune Awakening showcases this fact clear as day.

That's the basic gist. But what stands out as especially great, right? What sets this game apart from other survival games? Well, the worms are the most obvious example. Funcom has done such a good job with these things. They are permanent foes that roam the map, easily visible from a distance. You can't outrun them, nor can you kill them. There wasn't anything nearly as cool to see as a sandworm bursting out from the sand, slamming back down, and eating another player right next to you.

Better yet, when Spice erupts from the ground, you can watch worms rush across the sands like a train of sorts, pushing aside the sand dunes in their wake. It's quite the show when you see it blast by, and truly is a masterclass in not only visual and audio design, but also game design. Adding an insurmountable foe to a survival game made it so no matter how confident I felt, I was always looking out for the worms. They eat all your gear if they get you, too - all of it. Amazing. Risky. Brave.

Sandworm in Dune Awakening
A worm eats all your items if it catches you by the way, fun stuff. | Image credit: Funcom

I also love the representation of the two major factions: the Atreides and Harkonnen. I saw precious little of their presence in the game, but when they do show their faces, you feel the impact they have on the world. You quickly get to choose which of the two you want to work for, and they are depicted exactly as you'd expect. The Harkonnen guy at The Anvil is a jerk, whereas the Atreides lad is a boy scout. An easy choice, you'd assume, until you realize the Harkonnen guy looks 10x cooler.

Consider Harko village, a capital city of sorts for the Harkonnen. The moment you walk through the front gates you are confronted with slaves in cages, and a chorus of desperate wailing. Black stone looms over you, creating this wonderful clash between brutal militarised streets and lavish interiors found in its bars and banks. The Harkonnen are unashamedly evil, but there is a lady lounging in the back who calls you kitten, so who can truly say for certain if they're all bad.

One might wish for a more murky grey morality between the factions. But given how conflict between said forces appears to be the bread-and-butter of later game content one sees the merit in clear goodies and baddies. That's not even to mention the inevitable real life holy war Dune fans would wage if Funcom decided to present the political turmoil on Arakkis in a similar manner to modern World of Warcraft's faction hand-holdiness. Sometimes, it's good to be bad. The game quickly urges you to pick a side, and spares no expense in letting you revel in their culture, aesthetics, and so on.

Dune Awakening social hub
Not enough bad vibes for my taste, Harkonnen for life. | Image credit: Funcom

But here's where I chat about concerns, and I do have some. My first is one that could absolutely be addressed during the game's beta phase. I think the opening hours need a bit of tweaking. It's almost there, but the game doesn't quite tell you everything you should know before sending you out into the wider world. So, there's that base copier I mentioned earlier. However, the game has you build a bike and sends you across a vast patch of desert without copying it. Once you arrive, you're left quite the distance away from all your stuff. This is made much worse if your bike breaks down, leaving you largely stranded save for a pricey copter ride back to the first zone.

I'm also worried about just how long it'll take for players to transition from the solitary survival experience to the 'MMO guilds and factions' side of things. The entire time I played, I played alone, I didn't need anyone for anything. That's fine! That's A-OK. But I've not personally seen any reason to cooperate during my preview. Creative Director Joel Bylos told press after the preview that he hoped that players would organically collaborate when faced with difficult content. But I'd not see anything really difficult during my time with the game.

The one place that could have proven challenging was the bio lab located in the first zone, which I surmised was full of enemies. I say surmised, as due to the seamless nature of Dune Awakening, I only saw one enemy in there the entire time, alongside numerous other players who'd already cleared out the dungeon-esque interior. Now, I get why this is a thing; it would be far more frustrating - especially given the limited healing items and harsh death penalties to dying - for enemies to rapidly respawn in such an area. But this also meant the climactic end point to the game's opening hours was more of a lootathon than a battle for precious cargo. A tricky problem, and one without a clear answer.

On launch day, when hordes of players swarm to the game, will there actually be anything to pose a real threat to folks? Or will the journey through the game prove a smooth ride the whole way through? I get the strong impression that much of the challenge in Dune Awakening will stem from end-game PvP activities. You and your five or so friends guard a spice harvester while another gaggle of terminally online bozos try to steal your stuff. That's where I'm guessing the sweet honey oozes out of Dune Awakening, the sort of syrup that turns inquisitive newbies to inspired hardcores. But, I've not seen that. Naught but the closed beta testers have. All I saw that even glimpses those elder hours of the game is when I kamikaze'd my ornithopter into another player's house. And it was spectacular.


I've come away from Dune Awakening with a positive impression and a hunger for more, so much so that I redownloaded Palworld when I got home just to fend off the cravings somewhat. But there's still a lot of mystery around it! I get the strong impression that the make or break portion of the game, the part that the game's longterm success, was far out of our reach. So I'm keen to see just how good that 50+ hour experience is. But, what I can say is this: the new player experience in Dune Awakening has certainly set the stage for a truly compelling MMO survival game, and what could easily be the hottest survival game of the year.

This preview was written following a preview event in Oslo, which was facilitated by Funcom.

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