Dune Survival MMO Shares First Look At How You’ll Make Arrakis Your Home

Dune: Awakening, Funcom’s upcoming survival MMO, will let players experience the universe of Frank Herbert’s legendary sci-fi novel series firsthand, and that includes trying to build a home out in the vast deserts of Arrakis.

Funcom has released a firstlook at how base-building will work in Dune: Awakening. Early on, Funcom says, players will be able to claim a spot of land out in the game’s open world and craft their first base. More advanced upgrades will unlock as players progress, and there will be plenty of options for decorating the interior of homes, with “distinct visual styles” later becoming available.

But if living out in the deep desert was easy, everyone would do it. Deadly sandstorms, and, of course, giant sandworms, are a constant threat, so players will need defenses, including shields, to survive.

Funcom has stressed that Dune: Awakening is a survival game first, and as such players will need to constantly be on the lookout for opportunities to harvest water, seek shelter from the sun, and collect the most valuable substance in the universe, the spice, in order to thrive. Thousands of players will share a server in Dune: Awakening, where they’ll collaborate and compete in order to reign supreme.

Last year, Funcom revealed that Dune: Awakening will take place in an alternate timeline to that of the novels, one where players will be able team up with major characters like Leto Atreides (who dies in the first half of the original Dune novel) and be able to swear allegiance to the Dune universe’s various political factions.

There’s no word yet on when exactly Dune: Awakening, which takes heavy visual inspiration from director Denis Villeneuve’s recent Dune films, will release. Funcom held the game’s first closed beta test in December 2023, with more tests planned for early 2024. In other Dune game news, the strategy title Dune: Spice Wars recently left early access, and Paul Atreides and Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen even made a guest appearance in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone.

Dune: Part 2 will release in theaters on March 1, 2024. Villeneuve has already expressed interest in directing a Dune: Part 3, which would adapt the second novel in Herbert’s series, Dune: Messiah.