Dune Awakening was provided by Funcom for review. Thank you!
With so many survival games out there and it being one of my favorite genres, I’ve played a lot of Rust, Minecraft, Enshrouded, and recently V Rising. With Dune Awakening, I got to playtest through the start of this year, and I quickly realized how it throws you into a complex world built on decades of sci-fi history, and it's an incredible experience.
When the game begins, you're hit with names, events, and terminology that won't make much sense unless you've dipped into the books or movies of the Dune franchise, but don't let it discourage you. However, you may feel a little overwhelmed. There is an in-game archive to help, and it is quite in-depth, but don't expect it to hold your hand.
Originally pitched as a survival MMO, the developers have now clarified it's a multiplayer survival game on a massive scale. The game is broken up into servers, so there aren't hundreds/thousands of players on one server, and it relies more on the survival and crafting experience alongside the storyline. In fact, outside of trade posts and social hubs, it's rare to bump into another player. The game also has global chat channels and close proximity chat to interact with other players. You can interact with other players and join them or invite them to your guild, but it isn't a requirement. I think that's not bad, especially for solo players, and you're not punished for playing alone, at least not until the end-game content.
The story turns away from the established Dune lore by featuring a world where Paul Atreides is never born. You are thrust into the role of a Bene Gesserit, an agent tasked with unveiling the Fremen's fate and "awakening the Sleeper." You'll navigate the planet Arrakis, where conflict between House Atreides and House Harkonnen rages, locked in civil war for control of the planet. You’re a prisoner who’s just been dropped into this hostile environment.
The first 10 to 20 hours are spent gathering research resources while tackling the challenges the continued day and night cycle brings. In the Sun, heat is your enemy; spending too much time in the sun rapidly drains your hydration level, which is your main concern regarding survival. At night, you get convoys that hunt life in their drones, and you need to move tactically. However, there are challenges regardless of the time of day, like Sandworms coming out of nowhere to eat you up. So, you must be sure about traversal when moving across longer patches in the desert, sticking to rocky ground when you can.
There is no hunger system in the game; instead, you have to keep your water supply filled. This can be done by gathering dew from certain plants, extracting and purifying the blood of fallen foes, and later by certain structures. Water is used to keep both you alive and extensively for crafting, so you'll always need to keep large amounts of water on hand.
The beginning part of the game is structured into chapters or sections of the map, which are open areas you're meant to explore between these story elements. You use the accumulated knowledge you've gained through exploring these open PvE sections to cross a vast, expansive desert where your understanding of the mechanics is tested. It's always meant to be this heart-pounding experience, and will consistently offer exciting challenges.
Another clever thing is how they introduce PvP. PvP can't just happen anywhere. PvP zones are present in the Deep Desert and mainly offer high-tier rewards, as well as Spice, the most important resource in the world. Dying in PvP can result in losing all your inventory; it's high-risk, high-reward. However, you’re always on the verge of getting raided for Guilds and Bases. Dune Awakening doesn’t go hardcore on this, protects you from griefing, and only allows player damage to your base if you build it in a PvP Zone.
The vast majority of the map in the Basin area is only PvE, but there are sections that you'll find that are enabled for PvP. These are typically things like shipwrecks that you'll find lodged in mountainsides or crashed in open deserts. However, those in the open desert are a bit more dangerous and temporary than the ones on mountains, as they're 100% guaranteed to eventually be swallowed by a worm. So, you're not only fighting against players but against the eventuality of it being completely consumed.
These PvP areas always contain more challenging NPCs to face off against. But at the end of these mini-dungeons, you'll find rarer items like better blueprints for weapons or armor and even materials you can use to craft some of the more complex items in the game. If you aren't prepared for this PvP, you can buy most of the items you can loot in these zones in some of the merchant NPC stores you'll find located throughout the map.
Character creation in Dune Awakening is crucial for shaping your experience on Arrakis. The character creator is extensive, allowing many customization options, including choosing your home planet, caste, and mentor. These selections affect your abilities, dialogue, potential perks, and access, giving you a chance to express yourself and build out the character you want. You can also express yourself in your base design choices and vehicles, which can have minor cosmetic changes, such as their paint scheme.
The crafting and progressing through material tiers aim to progress you towards the final part of the story, the Deep Desert. Essentially, all of the zones you've played through in the Basin (the majority of the map) are in preparation for entering the Deep Desert.
Eventually, along the way, you'll be asked to align with one of two major houses, Harkonnen and House Atreides, which impact your perks, alliances, and unlock the political part of the endgame experience. It also ties into the lore of the alternative timeline, and the houses remain locked in open competition each week. Then player activity across the game feeds into a global score system, determining which faction has control.
Joining a faction is completely optional, but it also means you’re missing out on unique building sets and skins for your gear and vehicles.
The game doesn't rush you. Whether chopping stone, refining metal, or dodging sandworms, the pacing is relaxed enough to go all-in on one area. The combat mechanics have flexibility, and you're not stuck in one class. You begin with a single skill tree, but as you level and explore, you can mix and match abilities from others. That allows you to tailor your play style and try different builds from ranged, melee, swordmaster, poison arrows, and more. Maybe you want a stealthy poison setup with some crowd control thrown in.
Melee is a big focus in Dune Awakening, but the melee combat feels clunky. Parrying feels delayed, animations are stiff, and enemies often behave oddly during close combat encounters. I tried to give melee more time, but for some enemies with shields where you’re forced to kill them with your knife or sword by deep bleeding, most of the time, it doesn’t seem to work. With the game highlighting duel battles, melee combat feels more like a chore rather than exciting.
Ranged combat, on the other hand, is smoother by comparison and feels more reliable. Sometimes, you are forced into melee because enemies have shields that can only be broken with melee attacks, which brings down some of the excitement of combat. There is a ranged weapon to bypass those barriers you can get, but that's a few hours into the game.
This is a survival game at its core, but it's not one of those punishing, brutal experiences where dying means you lose everything. If you go down, the game gives you a second wind, a chance to revive yourself. You can do it multiple times as long as a certain meter doesn't run out. It takes the edge off the harshness.
Resources are also fairly generous and divided into six tiers, with the rarity improving as you move towards the Deep Desert. Materials respawn quickly; you'll find enough essentials if you keep moving. That helps make building and crafting feel less grindy, at least in the early game. Just remember that, like many survival games, the gameplay loop can feel repetitive after a while.
If you enjoy structured routines and the satisfaction of upgrading and progressing, that might not bother you, but it could start to wear thin if you're looking for non-stop variety. Arrakis is massive, along with the sand, rocks, ruins, and the occasional scavenger camp. It nails the Dune aesthetic, but that comes with a price. The world can feel empty; most buildings you see will be player bases, which won't be enterable.
In the early hours, expect to walk a lot. Eventually, you can research and unlock a Sandbike, and that's when exploration opens up more. Until then, trekking across the desert to turn in quests or grab resources can feel like a chore. I had a lot of fun building my base. I like how you can preview what you will be doing before you lay out your structure, giving an idea of what is happening before you commit the resources. The game offers the chance to go ahead and cancel certain builds right in the middle of the preview.
Base building in Dune Awakening is great, and I had a lot of fun building a more open base to store vehicles and putting in tons of mining tech, storage, and crafting devices, such as fabricators. These allow you to craft new equipment and build bigger and better vehicles, such as Ornithopters and Buggys.
Dune Awakening does have good controller support, no doubt in anticipation of its console release in 2026. It also has a huge amount of flexibility in its graphical settings, even a "laptop" mode that massively lowers visual quality to improve performance. I recommend using it if you want to play on the Steam Deck.
Sadly, even with this mode, the Steam Deck struggles to play Dune Awakening. Despite Valve awarding this game a "Playable" rating, I strongly disagree; the game is not playable on the Steam Deck.
As you reach later into the game, with huge player bases containing massive pentashielded hangers for storing their vehicles, expect drops in FPS well below 20, resulting in a poor playing experience.
If you're wanting to hop on and do a little base management and organizing, or if you're playing in the early game, you can get by on the Steam Deck, but if you're in a guild base in late-game or just have a large solo base, and especially if you're doing any form of PvP, you will want to stay away on the Steam Deck.
Dune Awakening has some accessibility options, such as disabling camera shaking and allowing buttons such as sprinting to be either held or toggled. You can also adjust the font size to be slightly larger or smaller. Motion blur and gamma can be changed.
The game does have voiced dialogue, all of which is subtitled. It also features in-game voice chat, but there is no speech-to-text feature for those hard of hearing.
Dune Awakening is a highly inspirational Survival MMO. It does great with its building and crafting mechanics. Even for Solo Players, the game offers trading mechanics to help them choose to buy their resources and continue their quest or explore the Deep Desert. And I like this a lot for players who aren’t in it for a hardcore survival experience but like a challenge for high-tier resources.
Quest progress isn't always shared across the party. For example, if you need to grab an item from a research facility, each member must collect it themselves. However, only interaction is required for tasks like building and using a fabricator. So, one person can build it, and everyone else can interact with it to complete the quest. This system is designed to encourage teamwork while keeping some objectives individual. Even with some let downs with melee combat, the good heavily outweighs the bad in almost every other aspect.
As for performance, I ran into a fair few technical issues, including some bugs that required a game restart. I’d get these seriously annoying stutters in some parts of the map. There were also some weird visual artifacts at times, but generally, the visuals are fantastic, and the Dune universe has been smartly integrated into all aspects of the gameplay.
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Dune Awakening is a solid MMORPG that has great potential to be a long-lasting title in the genre, performance on Steam Deck sadly falls below a playable level.
