Despite my appreciation for the books and movies, I was not really planning to sink time into Dune: Awakening, as survival games are simply not my thing. Particularly survival games where going AFK often means you die, and that was a real possibility currently managing a newborn and toddler. And yet…I’ve put 40 hours into it. I love it.
What’s working in Dune: Awakening for me? Well, as a cheat code, I had a guide. A real-life friend who does survival stuff more often and was able to walk me through some of the more opaque elements. And we have a little guild.
Dune: Awakening, in addition to its somewhat interesting “alternate universe” Dune story, holds appeal to me because ultimately it feels like “survival lite.” One aspect I hate is managing a million different depleting meters in games like this, but in Dune, that’s drastically reduced.
There’s one main meter, hydration, where the hot desert will deplete that over time, sapping your stamina and eventually your health. It takes time to build up things to combat this, from harvesting blood to turn into water, collecting dew from plants and building stillsuits, but it’s manageable, and the penalties aren’t that severe.
There are other “managing” aspects, but they’re extremely easy. Gear breaks down, but it happens slowly and it’s very easy to fix or replace. Your base needs power to function, and if it runs out, your structures will take damage, but you can fill up your generators with not that many materials, and you’ll be set for days.
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Base-building is one aspect of this I enjoy a lot, with some cool architectural options right off the bat and more you unlock over time. Again, this is not an aspect of survival games I’ve generally loved, but here’s a streamlined system that’s more accessible.
I find many of the aspects of the game relaxing, mining and collecting materials, which I know is a genre staple, but it’s enjoyable here. If I had one complaint, it’s probably about combat, which I think is on the poor side of third person shooters, and dealing with Dune-based shields is very clunky, even if you can wear one yourself to counter enemies.
Exploration is fun, with different ways you’ll figure out how to climb to high heights. And the game has one of the most terrifying encounters I’ve ever seen, the ability to be chased by a sandworm in the open desert, where if it catches you, you lose everything. Not just your backpack, but every single thing you have equipped including all your weapons and survival gear. Ever hear a thousand-foot long worm bellowing twenty feet behind you? Horrifying.
I would probably have tripled my time in Dune: Awakening were I in a different stage of life, but clearly, I’m not the only one on board. The game is still putting up 100,000 concurrent players a night on Steam almost a month after release, and the game is being updated consistently with hundreds of fixes and changes (most recently, a lot of issues with the endgame were worked on, though I’m not close to getting there yet).
Can I recommend it to everyone? I mean, I can recommend trying it, though it’s not a free-to-play title, so that requires some investment. But it’s an entry point into the survival genre that I think is accessible, and I’m having a great time.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
