Let the Spice flow! My ears perked up when I found out that a new RTS from the Dune universe was coming out. While I’ve tried to read the book a few times (it’s way too long for me), the campy movie from the 80s and the new reimagined one are favorites of mine. I do think it’s useful to have some context apart form a brief in game cutscene, you really may struggle to understand the universe if you’ve been exposed to these back-stabbing spice-miners yet.
In 2016, Legendary Entertainment acquired the rights from the Frank Herbert estate for his iconic and lengthy novel, “Dune.” In 2021 Legendary produced the movie “Dune” not to be confused with the 1984 version. With the release of the modern film adaptation, Dune became cool again, and in came two shiny new Dune games. The first of which is Dune: Spice Wars developed by a French team called Shiro Games and published in partnership with Funcom.
I will admit that it’s not typical of an RTS to hook me. Red Alert II was the last game in this genre I liked this much. If you’re at all familiar with the book or movies, the story fits with a 4X real-time strategy game like a hand in a glove. As you may have guessed, you’ll play as one of the factions vying for planetary dominance either by destroying your competitors, earning 30,000 Hegemony (a rating of a faction’s overall control and power), Political Victory through diplomacy, or economic victory by essentially day-trading on a stock market.
You’ll play on the sandy dunes of Arrakis, where “spice” is the ultimate resource. It is the key ingredient to interplanetary travel and thus the most valuable resource. If it were only so simple as to try and out-mine your opponents. Shiro Games did an excellent job balancing an incredible number of systems. You’ll always be gathering spice, but you’ll need to also expand your borders, explore the surrounding area, watch out for sandworms, ensure you’re paying taxes to the emperor, manage your troops’ water, and assign spies to do your dirty work behind the scenes.
Every few days there’s a council that meets between the factions where you’ll need to vote strategically based on which of the four win-states you want. The game is crafty. It uses a high number of spinning plates to try and take your eye off the ball. I was working on a number of spy missions when I accidentally went into debt. No problem, I’ll just pay less taxes, but then a sandworm came and ate one of my Spice Harvester. I tried to pivot when the sandstorm I had ignored rolled across my land and whipped out my army. It was great!
The systems harmonize in a way that makes it feel like everything is always on a knife’s edge. This is further underlined by the soundtrack and art design. While I typically prefer, some more detail compared to the cartoony look, I really liked the design language of the characters, factions, and UI. Instead of distracting you, it made you feel like you were doing something important. The sound design does a great job of adding depth to the experience. When you zoom in, you can hear the character’s buildings hum or the sounds of battle. Zooming out gives you a floating in the upper atmosphere sound.
I did run into one game-breaking glitch. While playing on Xbox, the land tile I was on began to glow during one of my play sessions. It glowed white, and all the detail contained in it wasn’t visible anymore. I tried resetting my TV, and turning on and off any HDR settings, but nothing helped. Eventually, I jumped on PC, and it ran fine, then I tried it on XCloud and it looked normal. At the time of writing this, I loaded up the game again and it was fixed. While that’s all well and good, I thought I’d report it just the same. The game supports cross-play, and multiplayer up to four players. It’s also available on Game Pass and is priced at $39.99. It’s a great package and has been receiving continual updates and patches.
Dune: Spice Wars takes everything that drew me into the movie and lets me try my hand at statecraft in Arrakis. It throws a lot at you, but that’s what the tutorial is for. Although I would have liked a little more handholding, it was fun to crater my society or be outmaneuvered by the enemy factions. It turned me into a greedy conniving faction leader and when I got too big for my britches, the planet knocked me down. It’s a steep learning curve to be assured, but well worth the time and energy. The board is set. The Spice Wars begin!
