Dune: Spice Wars Early Access eXamination

Introduction

Dune: Spice Wars is a leisurely RTS game that successfully integrates 4X elements into a complex tactical experience that rewards quick thinking over quick reflexes. The task that the team at Shiro Games took upon themselves seems daunting: develop a game based on not only a beloved book and film franchise but also a series of classic games considered to be some of the finest in the history of PC strategy gaming.

Shiro balance out tried and tested RTS staple systems with innovative new mechanics inspired by the lore of Dune itself: the planet Arrakis and the giant sandworms which populate it are both hostile to the player and are well recognized dramatic features, once again thrust before the public eye courtesy of the latest film adaptation by director Denis Villeneuve.

The new film has attracted new audiences to the Dune franchise, and that might explain why the game’s lore only references events and characters that appear in the very beginning of the books and doesn’t spoil the story for those who have never read or seen any Dune before. That might be as much a strength as a weakness; while it might be easier to get into for newcomers, many long-time fans of the franchise might find the story and lore lacking.

The Art and Design

Before diving into the game, it’s worth mentioning the overall quality of the art. Starting at the main menu with its view of the planet and the atmospheric music, to the smartly-designed minimalist UI and harmonious color scheme, the game breathes style at every step.

Well-painted character art, loading screens, and events add to the atmosphere and help flesh out the world. The faction leaders appear in a colorful cartoon style and a similar approach is used for the units, buildings, and other game models on the map. But more than anything else the terrain steals the show, with beautiful vistas of vast desert dunes, rocky mountains, a day and night cycle, and attention to detail that is rarely seen on a 4x game map and all without sacrificing readability.

The Board and the Pawns

In many ways, Dune: Spice Wars looks and acts like a real-time board game, as they hint at the end of the opening cinematic. Every game is set on the planet of Arrakis, a desert planet that has dunes, rocky mesas, and special regions like the Polar Ice Sink and the Shield wall. Before each playthrough, the map is randomly generated with irregular terrain features and elevation, with relatively hospitable rocky mesas snaking across the unwelcoming deserts covering most of the planet.

The map itself is separated into regions, each housing a village where everything happens: all the resources are produced in the villages and most of the combat revolves around them.

Regretfully this leaves little action for the deserts or rocky mesas, which serve as little more than space to be traversed. But that’s where Supply comes in. Every unit has a certain quantity of Supply which is replenished inside friendly territory and depleted outside of it. This adds a layer of complexity to traversing the open surface of the planet as if the worms didn’t pose enough of a problem.

Each faction has a unique home region with a well-defended base which is almost indestructible until the late game, as well as it should be considering the game is lost if it’s destroyed. The base is the only place where player-controlled units can be trained and contain global upgrades which have a strong impact on the game.

Dangerous and Gorgeous Arrakis

Although the desert itself is beautiful, it wouldn’t be Dune without the worms, the storms, and the Fremen sietches.

The worms are the most terrifying thing a human can experience on the surface of Arrakis: they appear suddenly and can gobble up a whole army in seconds. That is terrible, frustrating, and wonderful at the same time. And it’s wonderful because there is only one thing more frustrating than losing an army to a worm, and that’s dealing with another player’s doomstack.

Doomstacks are one of those problems which can ruin a game because they break the game systems and throw tactics, strategy, and even player input out the window. But a lot of happy feet walking in rhythm attract the worms, and that’s why proper army management and sensible force sizes are important in the game. Sandworms are also attracted by spice production but do not force more than a temporary interruption. This is regrettable, and it is at moments like these that I find myself wishing that the lore of the books was better integrated into the game mechanics.

The storms are arguably the most underutilized element in Dune: Spice Wars. They are easily avoidable, rarely do any considerable damage and don’t impact the game unless the player is careless with an already depleted army. Lastly, the Fremen (not the faction, but the neutrals) and their desert hideouts, the Sietches, play a considerable role in the game through their raids.

Sietches start off hidden across the map and need to be discovered by the player. Finding them helps you know where the raids could come from in the early game, and the diplomatic interaction with them provides large benefits later, from buffs to immunity from raids altogether. Their influence on the game can be instrumental to victory, especially if you’re playing with the Fremen faction.

These three elements bring the world of Dune to life. When setting up a game you can choose the regularity with which they are encountered, from nothing whatsoever to high activity. When playing with the pause feature activated, they can be managed quite easily as there are notifications for each event, with plenty of time for the player to react. But in a hectic and fast game with no game pauses, they become a real enemy, and sometimes a headache if you’re not paying attention.

While the developers haven’t done any wrong by allowing the player to choose the map settings, the option to change the level of danger of the environment comes with a downside. Some of the factions, like the Fremen, are better than others at dealing with the planet itself, and removing those dangers also removes their edge, leaving the game unbalanced in favor of the Great Houses.

The Great Houses of Arrakis

The player is given the choice of five factions largely based on the lore of Dune. With distinct models for the units and bases, as well as asymmetrical game styles, they make for a very different experience depending on who you pick.

The Fremen are the sole native faction of the planet and the only one which can ride the worms across the desert, looking somewhat underwhelming compared to that same scene in Lynch’s Dune. This makes them unique as the others must fly across the map and have to pay for the privilege of fast-travel. Fremen units are stealthy and dangerous in melee, particularly against the ranged units the other factions’ field.

The Smugglers on the other hand have the best-ranged units in the game, often sniping from a distance and retreating to safety. Their strength is in subterfuge and stealth, allowing for pretty interesting games on bigger maps if you take the time to learn how their unique technologies work. But if you want a more straightforward approach, you should choose one of the Great Houses.

The Atreides are defensive and the best choice for a beginner. They have a well-balanced army with a good mix of melee and ranged units, but their real strength is in their diplomacy, which allows them to influence the other factions and dominate the board relatively peacefully.

The Corrino might be even better than the Atreides at all of that and also start with a powerful army, which is much more offensive and benefits from increased numbers and heavy artillery. They can influence the Landsraad and excel at leveraging global spice production to their own needs, as the other factions need to pay them tax on top of CHOAM’s increasing demands.

The Harkonnens are the aggressive choice. Their powers of persuasion are useful in hampering the efforts of the other players, while they oppress their own villages into hyper-productivity, boosting their own economic development. They have stealthier units and can support their army with damage buffs that make them more deadly than the others, but arguably a bit harder to master.

The Great Houses have a starting advantage over the other two factions: their influence in the Landsraad. But first, we need to talk about combat.

War and Combat

While victory can be achieved in several ways, most players, especially when playing against other people will be going for the Domination Victory, the default win condition where you need to defeat the other players in direct combat by destroying their main base. Alternatively, assassination of your opponents’ faction leaders is an option, but I still haven’t seen that happen. The games are rarely long enough and combat is often the fastest way to decide the winner.

War is waged on the main map with units and powerful area abilities, called Operations. The limited amount of Command Points available limits the size of the player’s army. This simplifies the game allowing for the player to concentrate on the economy and politics, but the low variety of units means that there aren’t a lot of tactical options available to them other than managing melee versus ranged units and avoiding worms.

Units themselves move across the map quite slowly, making stealth rather than speed the only option for surprise attacks against other players. Units can be melee or ranged, and air or ground. Ranged units have an advantage over melee until the gap is closed, and air units can ignore terrain features and don’t attract worms. Some units are tanks and others are stealthy damage dealers, and both are necessary for a well-balanced force.

Every faction has five unique units that they can recruit while every village has the same selection of four defensive units to build regardless of the chosen faction. Additionally, there are neutral units that can be hired, like the Landsraad Guards and Mercenaries; and you just might see the Sardaukar if you don’t pay your dues. But to defeat the other players on the battlefield you need more than strong units
and fast tactical thinking: there are many systems connected to the economy and political game, allowing for creative battles and which make up for the somewhat uneventful combat.

Diplomacy, Agents, and the Landsraad

Diplomacy is not very developed, nor important. War on Dune is perpetual, and even though resources may be exchanged and economic treaties signed, players are free to attack their rivals even when bound by a Truce, although such betrayals come with a cost. But then we have the Landsraad.

The assembly of the Great Houses, also known as the Landsraad, gives the player the chance to influence his own, or other factions, through the use of Influence and/or Votes. Whether positive or negative, paying attention to which resolutions are available and choosing the correct ones can have a huge impact on the game and pave the way for a Political Victory.

The Atreides, Harkonnen, and Corrino start the game with Votes, also known as Landsraad standing, allowing them to vote from the beginning without expending resources, while the other two factions, the Smugglers and Fremen, have to use Influence to vote.

A particularly fun addition is the CHOAM stock market, which not only adds another victory condition: to control the majority of the stocks offered; it also gives the players an option of investing their Solari, buying low and selling high for maximum profit.

Another way to influence the game is with Operations, which come in many different forms, from scouting and causing rebellions to the assassination of the other faction leaders. But for Operations, you need Intel, a straightforward resource, and Agents. Agents are…people too, but they are used as resources, or rather the means of production for Influence, Solaris, Manpower, and Intel. Sometimes they are captured if they fail their mission and later returned through diplomacy if the other players are willing to trade.

An easier way to break them out of prison would make them a more valuable asset, as at the moment failing one or two missions can leave most of your Agents out of action, and the risk is rarely worth it. The game doesn’t allow you to become a real spymaster, and it suffers for it, especially considering the source material.

The Spice and Everything Else: Resources and Economy

If you were expecting a simplified resource system where the Spice is the only thing that matters, that’s where Dune: Spice Wars shows its 4x-ish face. Much like other games in the genre, it has many resources which interact with each other in complex and sometimes mysterious ways. Spice can be sold for Solari, Solari can be used for many things, and together with Manpower, it’s used for buying units. Authority and Water are important for expansion and Fuel Cells are used for mining spice and scouting as well as transportation.

Diplomacy uses Votes and Influence; Agents use Intel. Plascrete is a universal building material: easy to obtain and even easier to spend; you’ll need a lot of it to build up your economy and acquire the late-game upgrades. And that’s only some of their interdependence so you’ll never want any of them to run out.

Thus the lack of one resource can cripple the production of another, and that can cause a whole economic slowdown which in effect can stop your units from healing, crippling your army and giving your enemies a chance to attack while your subjects rebel and stop Spice production, causing even more problems for you to deal with.

It allows for creative tactics, enabling you to defeat an enemy by destroying the right building or taking over a certain village. Even causing a rebellion with an Operation in your opponent’s main Spice-producing village can slow down his economy, or force him to split his army to deal with it, which can give you an opportunity for another military strike.

The last resource, Hegemony, is unique because it doesn’t interact with the other resources. You can collect Hegemony either by directly producing it in your villages or through actions in the game, like defeating enemies, Water production, paying Spice tax, and more. Once one player accumulates a certain amount, he wins a Hegemony Victory.

This acts as a victory based on score and is a kind of soft time limit based on player
performance, preventing prolonged games with obvious winners, a situation which is rarely fun for
the other players.

Final Thoughts

Dune: Spice Wars is well-crafted by a passionate and capable team. I can see the love of the source material and the attention to detail in everything, from the art to the game systems, systems that weave a complicated tapestry of economy, politics, and combat enough to please even the most intricate Mentat minds.

While it has a lot of style, the lack of story and characters can sometimes seem like a missed opportunity. Where the game shines is in multiplayer, with games resolved quickly and providing plenty of tools to fight and trick other players. Dune: Spice Wars is perfect for those without the time to play a lengthier game but still want that feeling of epic grand strategy.

It is said that variety is the spice of life, and the game would benefit from more combat options, more diverse units, and different maps in addition to Arrakis. Despite that, even in this early state, the game is excellent, and most importantly, it is fun!

Filip Rizov

Filip is interested in games and how they are created. He’s particularly interested in the art, story, and how they’re integrated with the game systems. He considers that a great game is one where all the elements fit together seamlessly. When he’s not discovering new games and writing about them, he works as a freelance illustrator and likes to read and write fiction.