The Dune: Awakening beta is available this weekend until May 12, offering an early look into the harsh survival mechanics and endless deserts of Arrakis.
The beta provides around 20–25 hours of gameplay, representing early to mid-game progression. You’ll be able to explore the first three areas: Hagga Basin South Region, Eastern Vermillius Gap Region, and Western Vermillius Gap Region. For the story, only parts of Act I are accessible. On the crafting side, you can build with the Choam Building set, designed for early crafting tiers. During your exploration, you’ll also have the chance to assemble and drive the Sandbike.
All other content, including deeper regions and iconic vehicles, will only be available at launch. The full release is scheduled for June 10, promising a larger view of the world and its mysteries! Here is our first look at the beta and what you can expect from the game!
Character Customization & Classes
In Dune: Awakening, you begin with character customization. The options are quite large: you can start with preset body types and further refine your character’s appearance, or start completely from scratch. There’s also a wide range of tattoos, scars, and makeup to choose from, allowing for plenty of personalization.
During character creation, you’ll also be asked to select your Reverend Mother, which adds backstory to your character. Don’t worry if you’re not familiar with the Dune universe, the game provides brief descriptions of each planet, making it easy to choose the background that fits you.
Be careful with your choice, as it can influence certain dialogues and unlock unique emotes. Aside from that, the character creation is quite standard.
You can also pick a class. There are five in total, each with three skill trees, different abilities, and techniques. You can adapt and change mid-way if you want to match your friends’ playstyle or simply don’t like your first pick. There are NPCs that allow you to respec and try something new.
Survival & Harsh Reality
The desert of Dune: Awakening is not just a massive empty space filled with sand. You can find a lot of points of interest, harvesting nodes, enemies, and hidden areas to explore!
However, be careful. The vast deserts of Arrakis are as unforgiving as you’d expect. Crossing the sands, you may find yourself face-to-face with one of the most iconic beasts in the Dune universe: the sandworm. If you die, everything you carry will be lost, devoured by the giant worm. This makes every step on the sand a gamble, turning the desert into an ever-present danger.
On top of that, if you stay exposed to the sun for too long, it causes dehydration. This forces you to look for shaded areas to survive, or wait and travel at night. In the early game, surviving is tough if you’re not careful. There’s a day and night cycle that heavily impacts your ability to travel long distances. You have to be very careful to stay hydrated until you craft better gear and water collection tools that make surviving much easier.
Of course, you start the game with very little, but if you follow the quests, you can quickly craft your first sun-resistant gear and basic survival tools!
Water is clearly your biggest problem when you start the game. However, it quickly becomes a natural resource you can easily farm.
Crafting & Building
Crafting is really solid, even if the system feels familiar. Basic tools and consumables are made by hand, while more complex gear is assembled through machinery in your base. Each crafted item feels like a step deeper into the universe.
To craft gear, you need the fabricator. The quest actually guides you through this process the first time, which makes it quite enjoyable. You still need to gather the materials first, of course.
You can also craft vehicles. The beta gives you access to the sandbike, which you can customize quite well.
Building is not very complicated either. It can feel a bit clunky on a controller at times, but nothing too bad. Once you play a bit, you’ll want to put down your first base. For that, you need a sub-fief console. This console allows you to claim a zone where you can build almost anything you want. Other players can’t build inside your zone, and you can’t build in theirs either, unless you are in a group.
When you start building, you first see your item as a sort of hologram, which lets you visually check how it looks before you hold down the build button to craft it.
If you play in co-op, the building system has a sort of cooperative mode: one player can hold down the hologram, and the other can build it using their own materials. You can also save a copy of your base and reuse it in another spot later to directly craft the same building without starting from scratch. Of course, this only works if you have all the materials needed. You can even sell your base layout to other players.
There’s really a ton of things you can do with the crafting and building system, so don’t hesitate to try everything out! While the beta only gives you access to the base building set, the options at launch will be even greater!
A Beautiful World
Dune: Awakening is visually stunning. No matter what you look at, you will be amazed. As mentioned before, it’s not just a massive desert. It’s packed with beautiful areas that will force you to take a moment to stop and admire the view!
What Makes It Different From Other Survival Games
While a lot of things are still similar to other survival games, Dune: Awakening truly stands out with its constant threats. The sandworm, sandstorms, heat, and more, create a constant pressure that really immerses you more than other survival games.
You have to be constantly aware of your surroundings, make sure you have water, the best gear, and be ready to react quickly. It truly makes you dive into the harsh and realistic survival mechanics of the Dune universe!
