Dune: Spice Wars leaves Early Access this September

Spice is life, and it’s about to flow in full as Dune: Spice Wars prepares to leave Early Access. Developer Shiro Games and publisher Funcom announced plans to bring Version 1.0 to Steam in September 2023. There’s also a release trailer to go along with the news. The new preview shows off more of the real-time warfare and the various means of political sabotage at your disposal.

Dune: Spice Wars originally launched in Early Access on April 26, 2022. The 4X real-time strategy game tasks players with battling for control over Arrakis. Multiple factions—including House Atreides and House Harkonnen—are available along with key characters from Frank Herbert’s novel. 

Tremors

In addition to controlling spice resources and pulling off acts of subterfuge to expand, you’ll need to watch out for sandworms. Ignoring wormsign is a great way to lose your spice harvesters and troops. The number of games featuring any form of giant worm management or warning system in place is shockingly low. We’ll take what we can get and consider it a bonus if a quality RTS happens to be attached. 

The folks behind Dune: Spice Wars previously worked on Northgard, a strategy survival game based on Norse mythology. Northgard launched in 2018 and received its latest major update in April 2023. Like Northgard, players seem mostly positive on Spice Wars so far. Hopefully this sandworm will boast a similarly long post-launch tail. 

If you’re looking for more on how this one came together, the devs have been fairly active in showing off concept art and other details.