Fresh off Dune: Part Two dominating the box office, video game developer Funcom has pulled back the curtain on its survival crafting MMO Dune: Awakening. Funcom announced the game back in August 2022, but on Monday, the studio hosted a showcase to provide a closer look at the desert world of Arrakis and the game’s most notable features.
The survival game genre has exploded in popularity over the past few years, starting with the likes of Minecraft, DayZ, and Rust in the early 2010s. More recently, it seems like there’s a new survival game to play every few weeks, with recent entries such as Palworld, Enshrouded, and Sons of the Forest attracting tens of thousands of players.
Dune: Awakening will look to capitalize on that craze while also taking advantage of the fervor surrounding Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies. If you want an idea of how the survival game will compare to the movies, you can watch a new trailer below:
Powered by Unreal Engine 5, Dune: Awakening appears to bring the world of Arrakis to life in a way that no other game has ever managed. As Paul Atreides does in the books and the movies, you’ll be escaping sandworms, extracting blood from vanquished enemies to stay hydrated, and harvesting spice from the desert to fund your empire.
While Dune appears to have all the trappings of a modern survival crafting game — gathering materials, making tools, building bases — the massively multiplayer element should set it apart. During the Dune: Awakening Direct on Monday, Funcom Chief Creative Officer Joel Bylos made sure to point out that while some other survival games plateau once you have the most powerful arsenal or the biggest base, there will be systems in Dune: Awakening that should keep players coming back for more long after they’ve established their empire on Arrakis.
As much fun as I’ve had playing recent entries like Palworld and Enshrouded, I’m excited to see survival games take the next step. If Dune: Awakening can deliver on its many exciting promises, it has a chance to be a huge hit. It still doesn’t have a release yet, but you can sign up for a chance to participate in the upcoming beta test on the game’s website.
