I’ll be honest: when I first saw a demo of Dune: Awakening over a year ago, I was skeptical. A survival game on Arrakis, the famously barren desert planet? How could that be fun? But after spending nearly 20 hours in the closed beta, dodging sandworms, crafting motorbikes, and draining blood from fallen enemies, I walked away absolutely hyped. Now, in 2026, with the full game having launched and evolved, I still look back on that beta as the moment Funcom convinced me they could pull off an MMO in one of the greatest science fiction worlds ever created. The foundations were stellar even then: harvesting raw materials from the brutal wasteland, constructing bases, upgrading your character and loadout, and bringing all of that against raiders and rival houses. That said, I only got a small taste of the larger game. Major social spaces, most PvP, and all-important endgame areas were kept out of reach. And the build I played was rife with bugs and performance issues—so it was no wonder the release date got pushed back a month while I was in the beta. Even so, I was impressed by the vast majority of what I saw.

If you just recently got spat back up by a Shai Hulud, Dune: Awakening is a massively multiplayer survival game from the team behind Conan Exiles. The premise: you find yourself on Arrakis and have to find a way not to die. In typical survival fashion, you start with almost nothing and turn rocks and scrap metal into tools. You build shelter to protect yourself from the harsh environment. While you might wonder how jogging around a massive, featureless desert could be fun, Funcom filled each region with shipwrecks to plunder, hidden caves and fortresses to blast through, and mountain ranges to climb. There’s plenty of empty space with nothing but sand, but those spaces are used to great effect as obstacles. You have to navigate them quickly, lest you find yourself on the business end of a giant sand worm.

Here are the survival mechanics that kept me on edge:

Mechanic	How it works	Why it matters
☀️ Sun exposure	Dart from shade to shade; heat increases per region	Drains water, kills you fast
💧 Water	Ultimate resource; drain blood, use stillsuit, raid bases	Needed for crafting and drinking
🐛 Sandworms	Cross open sand on foot = death sentence	Forces vehicle use and careful routing
🏍️ Motorbike	Your first vehicle	Race across gaps before a worm gets you

For example, early on you’re limited to a small area cut off from higher-level zones with better loot. Crossing the massive distance on foot is a death sentence. To get to the other side, you construct your first vehicle, a small motorbike, then race across the gap as quickly as you can. This clever use of empty space turned what I thought would be a weakness into a strength. Finding ways to cross a completely barren area with a Shai Hulud hot on my tail actually made up some of my favorite moments. Similarly, the oppressive sun forces you to dart from shaded area to shaded area, turning the entire planet into a high-stakes game of ‘the floor is lava.’ Refusing to take sun exposure seriously will drain your water, wipe out your health, and kill you in short order. Each region increases the heat level, so you constantly have to invent new equipment back at your base. Sure, it can be a pain when you hit the head and come back to find the sun’s shifted and you’re frying to death, but hey, that’s just the price you pay for living on Arrakis, my friend.

Of course, you also fight off bloodthirsty raiders and explore forgotten places with gun or sword. The third-person gunplay isn’t groundbreaking—duck behind cover, toss grenades, return fire—but for an MMO with a massive number of players, it’s admirable that it feels this snappy. Skill trees let you differentiate your character: tricky stealthy Mentats, expert survivalist Planetologists, or a tried-and-true soldier. I focused on soldier, expecting boredom, but was pleasantly surprised to be grapple-hooking around and tossing deadly gadgets. Running and gunning with friends is especially entertaining. My co-op partner once used her Bene Gesserit skills to force an enemy into the open, then I threw a grenade to take them out. That’s when combat really shines. There was a tiny sampling of PvP in the beta, focused on a couple crash sites, but low server populations made it hard to judge. Most PvP hot zones are in endgame areas I couldn’t reach, so we’ll have to wait for the full game to get a good feel.

As a longtime Dune fan, it feels so good to explore a world I’m fond of. Funcom put a ton of effort into worldbuilding and lore, even while placing Awakening in a parallel reality and canon. Little details have massive impact: water is incredibly valuable, treated as the ultimate resource. You drain blood from every fallen enemy, turn your own bodily fluids into water with a stillsuit, and take down bases just to pillage every drop of liquid gold. Water is required to make advanced materials for higher-level equipment, so you harvest and stockpile as much as you can, in addition to drinking it to stay alive. This attention to detail touches factions and characters you meet along the way—a treat for any fan of the setting.

If there’s anything to be concerned about, it’s the bugs and performance issues I encountered. I saw everything from crashes to framerate dips, characters and objects stretched out bizarrely, and more. With the final version set to debut soon, I was relieved when Funcom announced a month-long delay mid-beta, presumably to address these issues. As always, it’s tough to gauge how much of this is cause for concern when betas are designed to highlight and patch issues, but the sheer number of problems my friends and I encountered was definitely cause for alarm with launch so near.

Now in 2026, looking back, those beta bugs were mostly ironed out, and the game has grown. But my 20 hours in the closed beta remain a highlight. Dune: Awakening made fantastic use of Arrakis, turning its barrenness into a strength. If you’re a survival fan or a Dune fan, it’s worth your time. Just watch out for the worms. 🌵