There may not be any new Dune movies or TV shows coming out this year, but Funcom is keeping fans entertained with a new video game: Dune: Awakening. The game just came out the other day on PC and already looks like a success: according to IGN, it had clocked 142,050 concurrent players on Steam, making it the ninth most played game of the last 24 hours on that platform. Generally speaking, player numbers grow over the source of a week, so we could see those numbers continue to swell through the weekend. There are even videos out there of players riding sandworms, which isn't something built into the game; if players care enough to break the game just for fun, you know it's caught on.
Dune: Awakening is faring pretty well among critics too, with an aggregate score of 77 on Metacritic. The game itself does sound like a pretty interesting take on the story. It takes place in an alternate reality where Paul Atreides was never born. The Fremen, the native people of Arrakis, have disappeared. In their absence, House Atreides and House Harkonnen battle for control of the desert planet.
You play as an agent of the Bene Gesserit sent to Arrakis to find the Fremen. You have to survive in the harsh environment, manage resources, make alliances with either or both sides of the conflict, avoid sandworms by moving carefully through the desert without making noise (or draw them on purpose to take care of your enemies), become the leader of a guild, and more. You can also venture into the Deep Deserts, an area designed for player-vs-player combat. Hundreds of players can fool around in there at once.
The whole thing sounds rich in content, and I'm glad that the Dune universe is making such a strong showing in gaming. Meanwhile, director Denis Villenueve is still working on Dune: Part III, which will adapt Frank Herbert's book Dune Messiah. That'll be the last movie in his planned Dune trilogy, which will bring back the likes of Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya to round out the tale. Herbert did write more Dune books beyond Messiah, but it may fall to someone else to direct in the likely event that Warner Bros. Discovery wants to keep going.
AND there's a second season of the prequel show Dune: Prophecy in the works for HBO. We don't know when either of these things will come out, but it won't be this year. For now, let Dune: Awakenings tide you over.
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