Dune: Awakening
Funcom · Survival, Base Building, Adventure
RELEASE MILESTONES
Dates from IGDB release data
Overview
Dune: Awakening is a single- and multiplayer Open World Survival game with immersive adventure and RPG gameplay. Explore, build, craft, and unravel a cinematic Dune story as you rise from survival to greatness on the most legendary planet in the universe. Just remember: the sandworm always comes.
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Dune: Awakening is an epic Open World Survival Game where you get to fully immerse yourself in one of science fiction’s most iconic worlds.
You have been chosen by the Bene Gesserit to go to Arrakis as their agent and uncover the mystery of the missing Fremen. Visit locations such as Arrakeen and Hagga Basin and meet familiar characters such as Duke Leto Atreides and Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, as you unravel an epic Dune story never told before: yours.
Whether you prefer to play alone or with friends, Dune: Awakening gives you the opportunity to explore a vast, open world Arrakis brimming with secrets to discover, stories to investigate, gadgets to craft, vehicles to assemble, and bases to build. You choose which path to take as you rise from survival to greatness.
Avoid the roaming sandworms. Seek shadows to stay out of the scorching sun. Study the slow blade or learn to master the powers of the Mentat and Bene Gesserit. Build a modest home or a massive base and decorate it to reflect your character’s unique personality. Climb mountains or craft your ornithopter and take to the skies.
Dune: Awakening gives you a living, breathing Dune on a scale never seen before.
Discover a dynamic and immersive Arrakis, from the rolling sand dunes of the Deep Desert to hidden Fremen caves and the bustling city streets of Arrakeen. Climb towering mountains with the Shigawire hook and fly across sandworm-infested deserts in an ornithopter you built yourself. Escape the destructive might of the massive sandstorms towering above you as they sweep across the landscape, then take a quiet moment to witness the beauty of Arrakis when the sun is low.
In Dune: Awakening, you get to step into the books and movies and experience one of science fiction’s most incredible worlds up close. Join the Atreides or the Harkonnen and rise through their ranks as you explore their unique stories. Meet familiar characters such as Duke Leto and Feyd-Rautha, investigate the mysterious disappearance of the Fremen, and discover the truth about your own past. Unravel an epic, cinematic Dune story that asks the mind-bending question: what if Paul Atreides was never born?
Arrakis is a test that few survive. Those who do, awaken. Learn to survive the unique climate of Arrakis, chasing shade and extracting liquid from the bodies of your enemies to refine it into water. Study the teachings of the Schools of the Imperium to unlock a powerful repertoire of abilities, weapons, and tools. Wield the Trooper’s unparalleled firepower, use the Bene Gesserit voice to control your enemies, deploy the Mentat’s deceptive traps, or master the Swordmaster’s unique dance of death.
Carve out your own piece of Arrakis and build your personal base of operations. From small outposts to elaborate and towering strongholds, build everything piece-by-piece in the Atreides or Harkonnen style, or any of the other available architectural styles, and decorate it to reflect your personality. Equip it with powerful crafting machines and spice refineries and watch your power and fortune grow. Craft anything from useful desert-survival gadgets to entire vehicles such as ground cars and ornithopters.
Play alone in full single-player, multiplayer with friends on a self-hosted or rented private server, or with hundreds of other players on a public server. The full game, with all its features, content, and story, is available regardless of which mode you choose. Both single-player and private multiplayer offer extensive gameplay customization options, allowing you to scale difficulty and tune gameplay options however you like.
From the game's Steam store page.
THE GAMEQ VERDICT9,996 reviews analyzed
What players are actually saying
1. Summary
Arrakis is what reviewers on both sides of the recommendation keep coming back to: heat and thirst that matter, a sandworm that can end a run, and the climb from scavenger in a stillsuit to base owner with ornithopters. The early and mid game in Hagga Basin is singled out for praise, and a recurring framing is that this is a strong survival RPG for its first hundred or so hours. Reviewers say a September 2026 update added a single-player mode with custom difficulty sliders, and it brought in newcomers and returning players: 18% of reviews written in September and October 2026 bring it up, and those months are 80% positive, against 57% for reviews written in the launch summer of 2025.
The frustrations sit after that first stretch and in the systems that take things away from you. The endgame (Deep Desert, Landsraad, tier 6 gear, capped specializations) comes up about as often as the setting and mostly draws criticism for grind and time gates. Bugs and crashes that destroy vehicles, bases or inventories are a frequent complaint too, made worse by support that reviewers say rarely restores items. Item loss to the worm, base decay that punishes breaks, server lag, a 24-hour rollback that reviewers date to February 2026, and server closures all feed the complaint that the game does not respect players' time. PvP splits the audience: PvE players credit optional PvP and the PvE Deep Desert with saving the game, while long-time PvP players say those changes gutted the endgame they bought it for. Some reviewers advise buying it on sale and not rushing the early game.
2. What keeps coming up
What players praise
Arrakis itself: atmosphere, lore and the sandwormHigh
A quarter of all reviews talk about the atmosphere, the lore, Arrakis or the worm, and negative reviews bring it up too, usually as the thing the reviewer is sorry to leave behind. Players describe heat, thirst and the sun as real pressures, and crossing open sand with a worm closing in is the moment people remember: "Finally, a Dune game that understands the desert is the main character." Dune fans praise the lore tie-ins and the alternate timeline in which Paul never existed, and some newcomers say the game sent them to the books and films. Visuals, sound design and the faction radio stations get steady credit. A minority disagree, calling it Conan Exiles with a Dune skin or saying the alternate story bends the source too far.
Base buildingMedium
Building comes up in 13% of reviews, and where reviewers judge it, praise clearly outweighs complaint. They like the brutalist pieces, the scale of bases and the freedom to build almost anywhere: "The building system is the best I've personally experienced in any game with base building." The complaints are specific: limited light sources, missing pieces in paid building sets, no snapping for decorations, a confusing claim and fief-console system, and the base backup and reconstruction tool, which players welcomed but which some say failed to place their saved base.
Vehicles and getting aroundMedium
Reviewers say the game opens up once they have wheels or wings, and sandbikes, buggies and ornithopters get regular praise: "I really enjoy flying the scout ornithopters around." Climbing and suspensor gliding are liked too. Vehicles also turn up in the complaints, destroyed by worms, falling through the map or vanishing after crashes, and those losses are a large part of the bug reports.
The single-player mode and custom settingsMedium
According to reviewers, the September 2026 update added a dedicated single-player mode, private and self-hosted servers had arrived earlier, and both came with sliders for worms, storms, item loss and resource rates. Single-player or solo mode comes up in 18% of reviews written in September and October 2026. Some of those reviewers are newcomers who say they waited for exactly this, and some put it bluntly: "single player mode saved this game." Returning players say it removes the pressures they quit over, such as other players' abandoned bases, griefers and base upkeep. The praise comes with caveats that appear in the frustrations below: the mode still needs an online connection, it first shipped with BattlEye required, it allows one character, and multiplayer characters cannot be moved into it.
The first hundred hours in Hagga BasinMedium
Survival, scavenging and tier-by-tier progression in the starting region are what keep people playing for days at a time. A distinct group of reviews, negative as well as positive, praise the early game, Hagga Basin or the first so-many hours and then fault what comes after: "Hagga Basin is amazing, 10/10. Deep desert is still pretty bad." Players who take it slowly say the progression feels earned, and several advise new players not to rush. The positive reviews in this group recommend the game for the journey and warn that the endgame plays like a different, weaker game.
Post-launch fixes that brought players backLow
Some reviews are launch-era negatives edited to positive after specific changes, and others simply say the developers listened or turned the game around. Reviewers credit the removal of base taxes, the base backup tool, the Chapter 3 endgame rework they date to February 2026, the PvE Deep Desert, self-hosted servers and the single-player mode. Some of the same reviewers still list bugs and a thin endgame, and say they recommend it for how far it has come since launch.
Where players are split
Story and quest designMedium
More reviews praise the story, writing or voice acting than criticise the story or quest design, and finishing Book One is a milestone people mention proudly. The criticism targets how quests play: back-and-forth fetch runs between NPCs, loading screens, stealth missions, arena-heavy Chapter 3 story content, and quests that soft-lock progress. "God this game's quests are dull. Like an MMO from 2008." A smaller group finds the writing and dialogue weak.
Solo versus group playMedium
Reviews that discuss playing solo, with friends or in a guild disagree about how well each works. Reviewers who play solo say the story and most content can be done alone, especially in single-player mode. Others say late content (tier 6 crafting, spice farming, harder testing stations) assumes a group, and some note that groups are penalised in certain dungeons. Players who want private co-op with a few friends complain they must rent a server or self-host, which several found hard to set up.
CombatMedium
About as many reviews call the combat good, fun or satisfying as call it clunky, janky or bad. Gunplay and abilities fare better than melee. The specific complaints are stun locks from groups of melee NPCs, shielded enemies, stamina, input lag and bullet-sponge enemies in testing stations: "The combat is horrible, and you get stun locked until you're almost dead over and over and over". Players who like it praise the shield and slow-blade mechanics and the ability builds.
PvP direction: optional PvP versus a gutted endgameMedium
Through 2025, PvE players complained that endgame resources sat in the PvP Deep Desert, where solo players were ganked, and 4% of reviews complain about forced PvP, griefing or ganking. Reviewers say later updates separated PvE and PvP Deep Desert instances, and 3% of reviews praise optional PvP or the PvE split ("Removed mandatory pvp. Game is 100x better!"). On the other side, 2.4% of reviews say the changes gutted PvP, turned the game into a "farming simulator" or blame PvE players, and these tend to come from players with hundreds of hours in the game: "Gutting PVP from this game was the dumbest thing Funcom could have done to it." PvP players say the structured faction warfare or arenas they asked for never arrived, while PvE reviewers describe simply staying out of the PvP side.
PerformanceLow
Some reviews say it runs well, including on old hardware and Steam Deck, and the single-player mode is credited with smoother frame rates. More complain about stutter, long shader compilation on every launch, frame drops near large bases, and crashes or system restarts during shader loading, with AMD GPU owners singled out in several reviews: "Still stutters like crazy, it'll probably never get fixed". Some say patches made performance worse after a smooth launch.
Price and the Conan Exiles comparisonLow
Conan Exiles, the studio's earlier survival game, is a common point of comparison. Fans of it often say this is the better game, while detractors call it a reskin with less content or worse combat. Reviews that give price advice typically recommend buying at a discount ("It's a steal at 50% off.") rather than at full price.
What frustrates players
A thin, grindy, time-gated endgameHigh
24% of reviews mention the endgame, Deep Desert, Landsraad or tier 6, and so do 30% of the negative ones. The complaints are consistent: after the story there is little to do but farm spice and run the same testing stations; the Deep Desert is huge and empty; specialization XP and Landsraad progress sit behind daily and weekly caps; and tier 6 gear costs hundreds of materials and loses durability quickly. Grind also gets complaints of its own ("ENDLESS GRINDING. HOURS AND HOURS OF JUST GRINDING."). Chapter 3, which reviewers date to February 2026, split opinion: some returning players say it finally added an endgame loop, while others call its dailies and scaling dungeons more of the same.
Bugs, crashes and lost progressHigh
Bugs, glitches and crashes appear in 15% of reviews and 27% of negative ones. The bugs reviewers describe are often ones that take things away: vehicles falling through the ground, inventories wiped on login or zone transitions, bases vanishing after a patch, a deconstructed console deleting its storage, and crashes on open sand that leave the player to the worm. Quest soft-locks, controller glyph bugs on the Steam Controller and keybinds wiped by patches add to it. Several reviewers say their support tickets ended without restored items, some quoting replies that the support tools cannot restore lost gear, and one negative review says only "Funcom support are useless." A few others praise staff who did restore lost gear.
Systems that take everything awayMedium
Death to the worm deletes everything carried ("Permanent loss of everything on you if you get attacked by a worm?"), which some new players meet in their first hours. Base upkeep is the other half: taxes and generator fuel meant bases decayed after a few weeks offline, and players returning from work trips, illness or holidays found nothing left ("Didn't play for a couple weeks. Logged in and all my stuff is gone. My base, bikes, everything."). Reviewers say taxes were later removed and a base backup tool added, and they welcome both, but generator upkeep on official servers still draws complaints ("i love coming home from my job to have another job").
Servers: lag, rollbacks and closuresMedium
The server problems reviewers list are lag, rubberbanding, desync, P34 connection errors, locked or full servers, queues, and maintenance at peak hours for some regions. Two events get their own complaints. Reviewers describe a 24-hour rollback on several servers in February 2026, done to undo an exploit, and it is a recurring subject in reviews written the following month ("Server wide progression rollback. I'm out."). Server closures and migrations to consolidate low-population worlds left some players with missing bases, vehicles or banks after transfer.
Cheaters, dupers and griefersMedium
Reports of cheating cover currency and item dupes that inflated the economy, hackers in the Deep Desert, exploits that let players into others' bases in PvE zones, and griefing in shared areas ("CHEATERS AND DUPERS RUINED THIS GAME"). Some reviewers say the rollbacks meant to fix exploits punished honest players more than the exploiters.
Single-player that is still online, and BattlEyeMedium
A few reviewers say they asked for a refund after buying on the store page's single-player label and finding they had to join a server, and they report that the single-player mode added in September 2026 still needs a connection and has no pause ("Can't pause, why do I have to have battle eye on single player"). Players object to a kernel-level anti-cheat in a solo game, and several report BEDaisy crashes or blue screens; later reviews credit an update that made BattlEye optional in single-player. Co-op means renting a server or self-hosting through Hyper-V, which several players could not get working.
An empty world and a shrinking player baseLow
Reviewers on official servers describe a quiet world: dead auction houses, no one to group with, and abandoned bases cluttering resource areas ("Fun game but sadly all servers are dead."). Some PvE players like the quiet; for players who bought an MMO it is a core complaint. Several reviews in this group point to the player count dropping since launch, some linking player-count charts, as evidence the game lost its audience.
DLC and season pass contentLow
Reviewers who bring up DLC or the season pass complain that the pass delivered mostly cosmetic packs, that the Water Wars DLC was presented as a polar map and became a cosmetic release ("Water Wars DLC reduced to cosmetics"), that the Filmic Archive was not part of the Ultimate Edition, and that paid building sets lack basic pieces. Some players say the free story chapters offset this.
No crossplay at the console launchLow
Reviewers say the console release in late 2026 arrived without crossplay, and that Steam players also cannot play with friends on the Microsoft Store or Game Pass PC version. The complaint shows up in recent reviews, mostly from players whose friends are on another platform: "No cross play on console launch is so stupid".
A slow start and smaller annoyancesLow
Smaller points come up repeatedly: the opening hours on foot before the first vehicle feel slow, menus and inventory lack labels and polish, the HUD is controller-first, there is no 16:10 support, single-player allows one character, and multiplayer characters cannot move to single-player.
3. The player conversation
Some reviews carry dated edits that flip them between recommend and not recommend as updates landed, and the newer reviews are warmer: reviews written in June to August 2025 are 57% positive, September to December 2025 65%, January to April 2026 67%, May to August 2026 72%, and September to October 2026 80%. Week by week, the dip after the February 2026 rollback (59% positive that week) and the rise after the September 2026 single-player update stand out.
Newcomers with a few dozen hours, some of them solo players who say they waited for single-player or a sale, write mostly about the worm, the setting and building. Players with hundreds of hours praise the first stretch and argue about the endgame, item loss and support. The PvP camp, typically several hundred to several thousand hours in, writes some of the angriest reviews and frames the PvE changes as a betrayal of the launch pitch, while PvE veterans answer that optional PvP is what kept them playing. The tone ranges from affectionate jokes about sand and spice to bitter post-mortems, and some negative reviews explicitly praise the early game before turning on what follows.
4. What the developers could do
- Give the endgame more to do and fewer caps. The endgame comes up in 30% of negative reviews, and players ask for content beyond spice farming and repeated testing stations, plus looser daily and weekly limits on specialization and Landsraad progress.
- Stop bugs from deleting player property and restore what they take. Lost vehicles, wiped inventories and vanished bases come up again and again in negative reviews, and reviewers say support tickets rarely bring items back.
- Make offline single-player and easy private co-op real. Reviewers welcome single-player but still want it to run without a connection and without BattlEye, with a pause, more than one character, and a way to host a few friends without renting a server.
- Soften loss on official servers. Worm deaths that delete all gear and generator upkeep that wipes bases after a break are the systems players single out, and the single-player sliders show the options already exist.
- Stabilise servers and avoid rollbacks. Lag, rubberbanding and disconnects during risky moments cost players gear, and the February 2026 rollback and server migrations cost them progress they had no part in losing.
- Act on dupes, hackers and base exploits. Duped currency, Deep Desert hackers and exploits that open PvE bases undermine the economy and the sense that grinding is worth it.
- Fix melee combat. Reviewers who criticise combat name stun locks from groups of melee NPCs and bullet-sponge enemies, and melee is where they want the work.
- Deliver season pass content as sold and add crossplay. Players who paid for the season pass say they feel misled by the cosmetic Water Wars release, and the console launch without crossplay split friend groups across platforms.
