Dune: Awakening is a survival game with MMO elements from Funcom, set on Arrakis. It has changed a lot since it launched in June 2025. Update 1.5, released on September 17, 2026, added a full single-player mode and wrapped up the first part of the story. In this review we tell you what the game offers, where it stumbles and whether it makes sense to buy it today.
Review
Dune: Awakening
An Arrakis you can finally walk through on your own after update 1.5. The atmosphere and the survival loop hold up, the endgame and the combat don’t.
- Genre
- Survival with MMO elements
- Developer
- Funcom
- Release
- June 10, 2025 PC · September 22, 2026 consoles
- Platforms
- PC (Steam), PS5, Xbox Series X|S
- Price
- €49.99 · 50% off until October 1, €24.99
What works
- Arrakis looks and sounds exactly the way it should
- The survival loop is fun and doesn’t force you to grind
- Base building has depth and you can rebuild freely
- Since update 1.5 you can finish the whole game solo
What doesn’t
- The Landsraad endgame repeats itself
- Combat and predictable AI drag the pace down
- The original MMO design still shows under the surface
- Rough edges: texture clipping, lip-sync drift, late object loading
Rated on the state of the game as of September 21, 2026 after update 1.5, 653 hours played · Steam 71.1% positive out of 78,878 reviews
Survival, crafting and base building
This is the core of the game, and also the reason Dune: Awakening works best in its first few dozen hours.
Water is both your currency and your timer. A stillsuit recycles your own moisture back into drinking water, but it won’t keep you alive on its own, so you plan every trip into the desert around how much water you can carry and where you’ll top it up. You can also draw blood from fallen enemies with an extractor and turn it into water in a purifier. It sounds brutal, and that is exactly how Dune is supposed to feel.
Hanging over all of it is the sandworm. Shai-Hulud reacts to vibrations, so running across open sand is a bet against the clock. You hear it before you see it, and for a few seconds you’re working out whether you can reach the rocks or whether you should try to cross the rest of the dune on a sandbike. That moment doesn’t wear off even after a hundred hours.
Crafting is built on exploration. You mine resources from wrecks, canyons and testing stations, and the tech tree unlocks step by step as you complete quests and discover new places. Recipes don’t demand absurd component counts, so progress stays smooth. The story questline walks you through all of it, and we’ve written up the seven Chapter 2 quests in a separate guide.
You build your base on your own plot of land in Hagga Basin, and since update 1.5 you can relax about it: Funcom scrapped base taxes, added snapshots (build backups) and lets you recycle an entire base back into materials outside the Deep Desert. This used to be the biggest source of stress in the game, because being away from the server could get hours of your work torn down.
If you want to know where building and politics meet, we’ve broken down all 25 Landsraad houses along with the weekly rewards they hand out.
Combat and PvP vs. PvE
Combat is the weakest mechanic in the game, but it doesn’t ruin it.
Melee uses a system lifted straight from the source material. Holtzman shields deflect gunfire and fast slashes alike; only a slow blade gets through to an off-balance opponent. The idea is excellent, the enemy AI just can’t make use of it, and most fights end before they get going. At range you get ordinary shooting without much feel to it.
PvE makes up the vast majority of the game. PvP happens mainly in the Deep Desert, the endgame zone with the best loot, which the Coriolis storm redraws every week and deals out anew. After update 1.5 the storm no longer kills instantly and you can work your way through the Deep Desert more carefully.
The Landsraad is the political layer on top of all of it. House Atreides and House Harkonnen compete in weekly cycles and players bring them resources in exchange for rewards. In solo the system simulates the other guilds, so the contest runs without you. It works, it just starts repeating itself after a few weeks.
The new single-player mode after update 1.5: what changed
Since September 17, 2026 you can play all of Dune: Awakening solo. Update 1.5 (version 1.5.3.0) added a single-player mode that contains the complete game on every platform, including story missions, challenges and rewards.
The main difference is that Funcom rewrote the systems that used to depend on other players. The Exchange, originally a player-driven marketplace, now works as a trader with a broad stock of goods. The Landsraad simulates rival guilds, so the political cycle moves along by itself. The Coriolis storm is still dangerous, but it no longer kills you instantly.
You can tune the settings to suit yourself. You get three difficulty presets to choose from, or you can set dozens of parameters by hand: storm and worm frequency, harvesting and experience multipliers, item durability, building part limits, base decay speed and what you drop on death.
The update also brought the first part of the story to a proper close, so a solo run doesn’t stop halfway through an unfinished arc.
| Before update 1.5 | After update 1.5 |
|---|---|
| The game required a shared server with other players | The complete game can be finished solo on every platform |
| The Exchange depended on what players offered | The Exchange works as a trader with fixed stock |
| The Landsraad only moved thanks to the community | The Landsraad simulates guilds and runs on its own |
| The Coriolis storm killed instantly | The storm is dangerous, but not instantly lethal |
| Base taxes and the risk of losing your build | Taxes scrapped, base snapshots, recycling outside the Deep Desert |
| Fixed difficulty | Three difficulty presets plus manual tuning of dozens of parameters |
If you shelved the game at launch because you didn’t want to play with strangers, this is your reason to come back. Claiming that Dune: Awakening has turned into a classic solo RPG would be a stretch, though. The structure is still survival and you can tell that some of the systems were built for a shared world.
Thinking about buying it on console? Take a look at how much Dune: Awakening costs on PS5 and Xbox and what’s different from the PC version.
Visuals, atmosphere and soundtrack
Visually the game sits at the better end of the genre average, and it gets a lot of help from borrowing the cinematic aesthetic of Dune. Sand, rock and the harsh light above the canyons look good, above all during a storm, when visibility drops to a few metres.
The sound is stronger than the picture. The orchestral score comes in at exactly the right moments, and the rumble of a worm under the sand is among the best sound effects we’ve heard in a game this year.
Technically the game runs decently, but not without faults. Now and then you fall through a texture, lip-sync in dialogue drifts out of step and some objects load in late.
Price and availability
Dune: Awakening costs €49.99 for the base edition. Funcom launched a 50% discount for the console release, so until October 1 you can buy the game for €24.99.
On PC the game came out on June 10, 2025. The PS5 and Xbox Series X|S versions release on September 22, 2026 including physical editions, and Deluxe and Ultimate owners got onto consoles as early as September 17.
Where to buy the PC version cheapest
While the 50% discount runs, that is until October 1, the cheapest route is Steam at €24.99. That’s the recommended option and there’s no point looking elsewhere.
Once the discount ends, it flips. At the official Dune: Awakening store you enter code MAGIC10 at checkout, take 10% off and pay roughly €45 instead of the €49.99 on Steam. The store sells a key you activate on Steam, and it doesn’t mirror the 50% discount.This is an affiliate link. If you buy through it, GamersTogether earns a commission. It doesn’t change your price or what we write here.
We break down the specific prices and the differences between the console editions in our article on the price of Dune: Awakening on PS5 and Xbox.
Who Dune: Awakening is for (and who it isn’t)
The game suits players who like survival and crafting and don’t mind spending the first few hours mostly gathering and dying. Dune fans get the most faithful rendition of Arrakis a game has managed so far.
After update 1.5 that circle widened to include people who refuse to play online. The solo mode isn’t a token add-on but a full option with settings of its own.
Steer clear if you’re after fast action or a hardcore PvP MMO. The combat isn’t what the game rests on and PvP is squeezed into a single endgame zone. It will disappoint you just as much if you’re expecting a linear story game with a steady pace.
Verdict: Is Dune: Awakening worth it?
Yes, if you enjoy survival games and you like Dune. We’re giving it 7/10.
A year and change after launch, Dune: Awakening is a game that knows what it’s good at. The atmosphere of Arrakis, the survival loop and base building hold up; the endgame and the combat fall behind. Update 1.5 removed the main reason a lot of people shelved the game at launch, and the discount running until October 1 makes this a sensible moment to buy.
If you wrote the game off because it was an MMO, give it another go. If the combat or the pacing put you off, nothing fundamental has changed there.
Decided to give it a shot? Take a look at the complete Dune: Awakening guide, where you’ll find everything from the Chapter 2 quests to the Landsraad houses.
FAQ
We’re giving the game 7 out of 10. It’s a solid survival title with a superb Arrakis atmosphere and a crafting loop that works, dragged down by a repetitive endgame and weaker combat. The platform data comes out much the same: on Steam the game has 71% positive reviews in the “Mostly Positive” bracket, and Metacritic holds a score of 78 from 65 reviews for the PC version.
It is, if you enjoy survival and crafting and don’t mind a slower start. Update 1.5 from September 2026 added a full single-player mode, so today you can handle the game without other players. On top of that, a 50% discount runs until October 1 and the base edition costs €24.99 instead of €49.99. If you’re after fast action, pick something else.
Yes. Since update 1.5 (September 17, 2026) the game has a full solo mode containing the complete content, including story missions, challenges and rewards. You pick one of three difficulty presets, or set dozens of parameters by hand, from worm frequency to what you drop on death. Before this update, solo play wasn’t a realistic option.
It’s a survival game with crafting and building mechanics onto which Funcom layered MMO elements. The shared world, the Exchange marketplace and the Landsraad political system are optional layers, not the core. It isn’t a classic MMORPG with raids and the holy trinity of roles, and since update 1.5 you can bypass the MMO part entirely.
The biggest draw is the atmosphere of Arrakis, meaning the visuals borrowed from the films and the orchestral soundtrack. The survival loop around water, stillsuits and running from the worm works without pointless grind. Base building has depth and exploring on a sandbike or an ornithopter pays off. Update 1.5 added a working solo mode with adjustable difficulty.
The Landsraad endgame starts repeating itself after a few weeks and the combat system can’t make use of its own ideas, because the enemy AI is predictable. The grind grows as you progress. Technical faults such as falling through textures or lip-sync drifting out of step persist. Even in solo you run into systems originally designed for a shared world.
The story arc of the first book will take you dozens of hours, and the exact figure depends on how much time you spend building and exploring. If you get into the endgame content around the Landsraad and the Deep Desert, the game offers hundreds of hours thanks to its weekly cycles. A solo run with your own difficulty settings can be considerably shorter.
At the moment, yes. With update 1.5 Funcom prepared an option to launch the game without BattlEye for solo mode and private servers, but a subsequent hotfix temporarily disabled it because of problems with launch parameter settings on Steam that were breaking multiplayer connections. On multiplayer servers BattlEye is still mandatory.
This review was written on PC on version 1.5.3.0 after 653 hours played, and the details about the content of update 1.5, prices and release dates are verified as of September 21, 2026 against official Funcom sources and the game’s Steam page. The game is evolving fast, so we keep an eye on the last-updated date. Before you dive in, have a look at the system requirements and our overview of how the gameplay works; you’ll find the price of the console versions in our article on Dune: Awakening on PS5 and Xbox, or head back to the Dune: Awakening hub.