As is tradition, this year’s Game Awards show was filled with numerous high-profile game announcements, includingQuantic Dream’s long-rumoredStar Wars: Eclipseproject, set in the High Republic Era. Among these announcements, the trailer forDune: Spice Warsalso debuted, a strategy game in a similar vein toEndless Legend.
Made by Shiro Games, a French game development company known for the critically acclaimedNorthgard– a strategy game based on Norse mythology –Dune: Spice Warslooks to be a visually-stunning treat built around the famous 4X gameplay pillars: Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate.
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The game’s announcement trailer is admittedly vague, but tries to conjure up familiar imagery through depicting the endless dunes of Arrakis inside the game’s engine before panning to an outstretched hand holding the desert landscape. The title ofDune: Spice Warsuses the already-iconic font which debuted with thepopular 2021Dunemovie adaptation, hinting that the game will draw inspiration not only from the source material, but also from Denis Villeneuve’s film.
In addition to the trailer, theDune: Spice Wars’announcement was accompanied with screenshots that offer a glimpse into its gameplay loop, as well as some of the factions that the game allows players to choose from. The Early Access period for the game will launch some time in 2022, and will feature four asymmetrical factions to choose from, of which House Atreides and House Harkonnen have been revealed, with the other two still being a source of speculation. Given their colors, it is safe to assume that the two most likely candidates would be the Fremen for yellow, and the Bene Gesserit for blue.
True to the nature of the source material, the players will be able to leverage their political power with the other factions to further their own goals – most notably through means of sabotage, assassination, spying, and other acts of subterfuge.
A strategy game is certainly a fitting genre to best adapt the intricacies of Frank Herbert’s setting, andDune: Spice Warswill no doubt stand alongside the legacy thatDune 2, a popular real-time strategy released in 1992, left behind. Whether or not it will do so favorably or not remains to be seen, but given the track record of the developers, there is ample cause to remain hopeful.
For those who may not be fans of strategy games, Funcom is also developing an open world multiplayer survival game with theNorwegian studio that broughtConan Exilesto the world, with its allocated budget being dramatically increased after Tencent bought the company out in 2020.
Dune: Spice Warsis being released for Early Access on PC in 2022.
