PC Dune: Spice Wars - RTS game with 4X elements from Northgard developers, update: Version 1.0 released, initial reviews posted

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Keyser_Soze]

There's never been a better time to get into Dune.

[Mercury33]

I wish more 4x games game to consoles

[JPDunks4]

What is a 4x game? Don't recall ever hearing that distinction. 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Just now, JPDunks4 said:

What is a 4x game? Don't recall ever hearing that distinction. 

 

It's the genre to which Civilization and its like belong - it stands for "eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate".

[osxmatt]

I am interested.

[Zaku3]

2 hours ago, JPDunks4 said:

What is a 4x game? Don't recall ever hearing that distinction. 

 

Most of them should run on just about anything. If you have a windows laptop it might be worth giving it a shot.

[jaethos]

I'm interested, hopefully it's good.

[vaxick]

As great as Dune RTS titles have been since the early 90's, I'd really love to see a new attempt at an adventure game.  We had one incredibly good one for the Sega CD/Amgia/PC from Cryo Interactive and that's been about it.

[Keyser_Soze]

Dune: Spice Wars - Dune: Spice Wars FAQ - Steam News

STORE.STEAMPOWERED.COM

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Answering the communities most pressing questions...

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

 

[Paperclyp]

Looking pretty cool

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

 

 

Dune: Spice Wars gets back to basics with its compelling mix of 4X ambition and real-time strategy

WWW.ROCKPAPERSHOTGUN.COM

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The creators of Northgard and Wartales show us their latest game, Dune: Spice Wars, detailing everything from military units to diplomacy and espionage.

 

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Whichever way you decide to go about it, though, this early access build of Dune: Spice Wars looks like it will have plenty of plates to keep spinning, and I, for one, am excited to dig into it all myself. Based on what I've seen, it looks like Shiro Games have done a fine job of translating Dune's big epic power plays into a real-time 4X strategy game, and most importantly, it doesn't look overly intimidating for first-time players to the genre, either. There's a lot to take in, for sure, but as someone who's always been a bit frightened of tackling some of the all-time 4X greats, Dune: Spice Wars definitely looks more my kind of speed - and a 3-5 hour game length isn't half bad either. There's still no word on exactly when Spice Wars will be heading to early access on Steam just yet, but we'll keep you posted as soon as we hear more.

 

 

Dune: Spice Wars delivers its own flavor of real-time strategy in Frank Herbert's sci-fi universe | GamesRadar+

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We take a look at the upcoming RTS with 4X elements from Northgard developer Shiro Games

 

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While spice is the name of the game, it isn't the only means of gaining power and influence. In Dune: Spice Wars, your approach in politics and diplomacy adds an additional layer of strategy to your quest to have a monopoly on Arrakis and its spice. The Landsraad council, for example, is a hub where you can vote on resolutions that can affect different aspects of your influential power such as infrastructure. Through acts of diplomacy, you can also strike up trades and form treaties that can sway how the opposing groups view you. If you want to be a bit more cloak and dagger in your political dealings, you can also attempt to perform subterfuge missions with your spies to gain an advantage. While the UI is currently subject to change, there are some in-depth systems at play that fit right into the world of Dune and offer up a variety of approaches to conquer the sandy landscapes.

 

Be it through warfare, politics, economical power, or subterfuge, there's an undeniable appeal in the amount of choice Dune Spice: Wars offers you to shape your own journey to power. It's also clear in the many features and details that Shiro Games has a lot of love for the Dune universe, packing this 2022 release with little details that will no doubt speak to fans of Frank Hubert's world. And even if you're unfamiliar with the classic sci-fi epic, the challenges of the desert planet will no doubt bring more dimension to the strategy of this upcoming 4X RTS. 

 

 

 

Dune: Spice Wars is an exciting mix of RTS combat and political maneuvering | PC Gamer

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The 4X RTS takes place on Arrakis, but doesn't ignore the forces of the wider galaxy.

 

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Dune: Spice Wars is an RTS set on the desert planet we've seen so much of in the books, movies, and other Dune games, but excitingly, it's not just about pushing an army around: It also involves the alliances and economies of Dune's broader galaxy. During a recent hands-off demonstration, I watched as a House Atreides player spread out from a single starting territory to explore the surface of Arrakis while also engaging in imperial intrigue, something you can glimpse in the new trailer above.

 

Spice Wars shares a lot of design basics with Shiro Games' critically acclaimed Northgard, an RTS centered on capturing and controlling territories rather than spreading out over a wide-open map. That works pretty well with the 4X DNA present in Spice Wars. Expanses of desert terrain form outlined territories which each contain a small town. Conquering the town confers control of the territory, and each section of desert can be exploited for resources like Spice for trade, Plascrete for buildings, or various rare commodities to sell for cold hard cash.

 

 

[Bitgod]

Seemed more 4X than RTS in the trailer, which is what I'd prefer.  If I can 4X it, I'm interested.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Dune: Spice Wars doesn’t bring anything new to the Dune table

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The strategy game has entered early access, with uneven results

 

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An hour into Dune: Spice Wars, I felt a nostalgic pang for the old Westwood Dune games, when the graphics were fun, the writing was campy, and things were stylized away from the real-world gravity of Frank Herbert’s books. The original Dune’s vibrant jewel tones and awkward vibes made for an amusing translation of the 1984 David Lynch film adaptation. Dune II is widely considered the godfather of modern real-time strategy games, but it was also delightfully weird, and had a banging score by Frank Klepacki. 2001’s Emperor: Battle for Dune had great cutscenes starring Michael Dorn and Mike McShane, which elevated its delightfully gawky UI and visuals into a memorable part of early full-motion video game history.

 

These games didn’t really dig deep into the real-world ugliness of Dune, because playing up the franchise’s weirdness, especially using the idiosyncrasies of old-school graphics, helped to soften Arrakis into a fantastical escape. Spice Wars — at least in its current early access state — breaks away from this stylish legacy to make an uncomplicated 4X real-time strategy game with uneven results.

 

 

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Dune is an infinite well of eccentricities, and every new project set in its universe has the exciting potential to get weird with the source material. Spice Wars misses out on all these creative opportunities to explore the more compelling parts of the Dune world. For every rote portrayal of an ambitious Great House which seeks spice and glory, we’re deprived of something new — perhaps a rogue branch of the Bene Gesserit, or an end-game scenario where the Fremen gain insurrectional abilities. This isn’t just a matter of reimagining win conditions, balancing the development (technology) trees, or improving faction characterization — it goes back to the wider, messier problem of how the developers approached the finer points of Dune.

 

I’m sure some of these issues can be solved with patches and DLC, and I hope that Shiro will continue to deepen mid- and late-game gameplay. Visually, the mid-00s cartoonish vibe sort of works — the environments and desert palettes are quite lovely, and I’m a fan of the easy zoom/scroll features on the map. It’s always fun to watch invaders get deleted by a sandstorm (or a sandworm). But on a wider thematic level, it’s difficult to imagine that the final product will be drastically different when it leaves early access, and it’s unreasonable to expect Spice Wars to get too experimental within the conventions of the 4X genre — most strategy fans are drawn to these kinds of games for the heady rush of conquest, with all its attendant struggles. (Tell me you enjoy losing at Civ, and I’ll call you a liar.) My biggest issue is that Spice Wars doesn’t really seem to understand why it’s a Dune game, or even what makes a Dune setting compelling in the first place.

 

 

 

Dune: Spice Wars Early Access Review - IGN

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Overall, I'm very impressed so far with Dune: Spice Wars. There are some balancing issues with the victory conditions and espionage mechanics, as well as the kind of minor bugs you'd expect from early access, but it’s a layered, clever, generally well-balanced RTS with strong faction diversity, and it feels more or less finished even in its current early access state. The map looks great, and forces you to make interesting decisions about its deadly terrain and even deadlier inhabitants. Most remarkably, it manages to lay a lot of complex systems on the table while rarely feeling overstuffed or overwhelming. If this is just the launching pad for our adventures on Arrakis, I look forward to seeing where this one eventually lands, and I have no hesitation about recommending that strategy fans jump in now.

 

 

Dune: Spice Wars early access review: a compact 4X that falters in the middle

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Dune: Spice Wars is a compact, complex 4X, but an inconsistent midgame and lack of narrative decision making hold it back from maximum spiciness.

 

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I’m also somewhat torn between my own personal feelings toward the game and how clearly thoughtful and well-made it is. Now that I’ve finished reviewing it, I won’t be playing Spice Wars for fun. I’ve hit victories with two of the four factions, come close enough with the other two, as well as experimenting enough to have had my fill. After CK3 and Stellaris, I find it hard to get invested in grand strategies that don’t have some sort of role playing aspect, although that’s not to say Spice Wars isn’t good at making you feel like a major player on Arrakis. You can always roleplay as ‘guy who likes to own all the spice’, of course, and you’d be well catered for.

This said, less good than very good is still good (wrote the professional, terribly), and Spice Wars has been a very pleasant surprise overall. It’s intricate. It’s polished. It’s well considered.

 

I remember in the early 2010’s where, if you wanted to make a soulless licensed game, you did some sort of God Of War ripoff, and how that gradually got phased out for limp turn based tactics. What I’m saying is, I don’t think you make a cerebral, intricate 4X out of cynicism, and this very much feels like a game Shiro wanted to make, trends be damned. They did opt for the most aesthetically boring Baron Harkonnen imaginable though, whose current incarnation I will hold against Villenue forever. I hope ‘early access’ means they can go back to this concept art and not decide on the objectively worst one, the cowards.

 

 

 

A first play of Dune: Spice Wars feels like a first read of the books (Eurogamer)

 

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That's probably the main sticking point at this very early moment with Dune: Spice Wars. The AI isn't brilliant, with barely a trade offered for the whole game and, on medium difficulty, after the early game barely a real attack thrown my way beyond some defensive battles and enemy-caused revolutions here and there. It's also still a little bit foggy. I didn't know what the actual win condition was until I started poking around the "Hegemony" part of the resource bar halfway into my game - basically a race to 25,000 points - and then voted my way to a sneaky finish in the council.

 

Still, foggy is certainly Dune alright, and all the little things are where you find the magic with these games anyway. Balancing how much spice I keep in reserves for tax and how much I sell to CHOAM, what troops I surprise-airlift to where, which local tribes I befriend and how I get across that damn desert. It's a challenge at first, but I suspect few Dune fans would have it any other way.

 

 

 

Dune: Spice Wars Review | Attack of the Fanboy

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Let's set the scene: a wicked sandstorm blocks your path, your military is starving and losing supplies, and a sandworm has just been spotted in your

 

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Dune: Spice Wars has something that can appeal to everyone. The adjustable difficulty, map size, and which factions you wish to wage war upon are great for those that are new to the genre, and want to get their feet wet for the first time. Or, if you are a veteran, you’ll find all of the challenges that you could ask for and more. With a haunting soundtrack, great sound effects, a great visual style that stands out from the crowd, and the plethora of options that you’ll be able to take to achieve victory, you’ll find yourself excited to try to take command of the Spice, even after suffering a crushing loss. Dune: Spice Wars is a truly great use of its license and since it is in Early Access, it has plenty of room to expand. But as it stands, you’ll find an excellent game that is worthy of your time and effort that can only continue to get better from here.

 

 

Not So MMO: Dune Spice Wars Preview | MMORPG.com

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Dune Spice Wars is a new RTS game by Shiro Games. Having just been released into early access, we take a look at how life is on Arakkis fares under the Funcom banner.

 

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As Dune: Spice Wars enters Early Access, it is obvious that Shiro Games still has a long way to go before they have a completed game. There currently aren’t any campaign or story missions to play through, so Spice Wars is entering Early Access with only a standard conquest mode to enjoy. And although there are plans to add multiplayer support at some point during Early Access, right now it’s just you against three AI-controlled factions.

 

Even in its bare-bones state, though, it is obvious that we aren’t dealing with a simple military-focused experience where might is the sole means for victory. During my first attempt at Dune: Spice Wars, I did indeed try to take a military-only approach, only to find my faction unable to bear the cost of battle. On subsequent attempts at controlling Arrakis, I began using espionage and the Landsraad Council to weaken my enemies before striking, and that balanced approach worked much better. As Shiro Games continues to flesh out these systems, I am certain that Dune: Spice Wars has the potential to offer a rich experience to fans of the strategy genre.

 

I’ll be especially interested in seeing how Shiro Games handles multiplayer. Will they give players the ability to work behind the scenes to create alliances? Will you have the means to secretly trade resources for votes as you attempt to weaken another faction, or will multiplayer be merely an extension of the single-player experience where the AI is replaced by humans with no additional means of communication? I sure hope so, because the Dune universe is about more than just military might, it is about amassing power through any means necessary, and from what I’ve seen so far, Dune: Spice Wars has a foundation that is primed to take advantage of all that universe holds.

 

 

 

In Dune: Spice Wars, The Planet Arrakis Is As Deadly As Everyone Else - GameSpot

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The 4X take on the war for Arrakis feels like it captures a lot of what makes the Dune stories interesting, from the warfare to the political intrigue.

 

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With enough votes, influence, and diplomacy, though, you can get yourself elected to key leadership positions, and that's how the Harkonnen ultimately won my game, even as I was ripping through their military, liberating their villages, and cutting off their resources. Watching the evil Harkonnen baron game the system to take control of the planet through guile felt extremely Dune, I have to say. The only thing better would have been if his spies had somehow assassinated me--a thing that can apparently happen as well.

 

Dune: Spice Wars releases in Steam Early Access on April 26, and from the sounds of things, developer Shiro Games intends to add more factions and other elements in the future, including multiplayer. The battle to control the spice sounds like it's going to get even more complex and intense, but for now, Dune: Spice Wars scratches the 4X itch while also capturing the essential lethality of the planet and the universe on which it's based.

 

 

 

Dune: Spice Wars Covers A Lot Of Ground And Asks You Do The Same

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Dune is a complex sci-fi universe that creators struggle to paint accurately. However, Dune: Spice Wars takes a good shot at creating an experience about creating a network to harvest spice and seize power across the stars.

 

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This is a big game that is still in Early Access, so there are bound to be some issues. The biggest one that Dune: Spice Wars has is how you navigate. The larger your operation expands, the more area you have to cover in a short amount of time. You can zoom out quite a bit, which is nice when getting started, but once you stretch across so many regions, the map can be quite a mess and disorienting to jump around. This isn't helped by the fact that sometimes your hubs can be stretched far apart.

 

The other main issue is that it definitely has a lot of mechanics and elements to consider. In a vein similar to Minecraft, this is one game that would benefit from a thorough tutorial or game guide. There are hints and pop-ups to help you along the way, but you'll need to figure out how to manage and keeps things consistent for yourself. While there may be value in learning through playing, this is not a game where you're happy starting over because of one thing you didn't notice. This game is a fun, intricate, and engaging house of cards.

 

 

 

Dune: Spice Wars is an intriguing melange of real time and 4X strategy

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A real time 4X strategy game set in the classic Sci-Fi universe, Dune: Spice Wars blends the new with the old. Our Early Access hands on.

 

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One immediate issue with starting a campaign for the first time is how many different resources there are to manage, and how distributed they are across the user interface. You have Spice which can be sold to CHOAM or stockpiled for paying regular tithes to the Padishah Emperor. Then there’s your actual cash, your building materials, manpower, water and one form of influence. Yet there’s another kind of influence, a measure of your growing power, agents to assigns to different factions… it all gets a bit much trying to figure it all out, and it’s all denoted by tiny symbols. It took me a while to figure out that the symbols for buying the covert Operations weren’t some new type of resource, but were actually just where I had agents assigned to.

 

In general, the UI looks stylish and minimalist, but I do feel it could be massaged to improve how easy it is to understand at a glance. The tutorial presents occasional pop-ups as you interact with each part of the user interface and the gameplay, rather than a bespoke scenario. It’s fine, and the gameplay concepts aren’t terribly complex, but it could do a little more to embed new players within the multitude of resources and economies you’re keeping a tab on.

 

From my initial forays into Dune: Spice Wars, I’m enjoying how Shiro Games has taken the Dune universe and adapted it to video game form. I get a real board game vibe to the scale and scope of the conflict that, outside of the multi-faceted economy you need to manage, feels accessible and intuitive to pick up and play. There’s some expanding to do through early access, with a fifth faction, a campaign, and some added gameplay depth, but the core gameplay is already here.

 

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

PC Gamer's Early Access impressions:

 

Dune: Spice Wars delivers the 4X war, but could use more Dune | PC Gamer

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Spice Wars is a little bit Civ, a little bit Northgard, and not yet enough Frank Herbert.

 

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Early access will give Spice Wars the opportunity to root itself more deeply in Dune's universe, but it's going to need a greater focus on characters, mounds of flavor text, and more differentiation between its factions to begin feeling more like an interpretation of Dune and less like a playground painted to look like it. But I do like how compact it is compared to the likes of Civilization or Total War, while still managing to offer the same balance of exploration, expansion, exploitation, and extermination. 

 

I enjoyed zooming in on my Fremen warriors and watching them chew through Harkonnen soldiers and level up. Likewise there was a real tension sending them across a sandy wasteland and watching their supply meters ticking down the longer they were outside my territory. Single units in Total War are meaningless, but I was heartbroken when two of my veterans were swallowed up by a sandworm while running for the rocky safety of a settlement. Spice Wars is already able to tell stories unique to Dune in small bursts, even if it's lacking the direct storytelling of a campaign.

 

A year from now I hope Spice Wars is weaving in narration, too, and using characters to give each faction more life. In Herbert's original novel, Muad'Dib says "There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors." I'm not saying that quote alone is justification for Spice Wars stealing Old World's heir system and complex relationships, but, well, is Dune truly Dune without knife duels settling everything from the fate of the universe to petty grudges?

 

 

[Keyser_Soze]

1.0 now

 

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Game Information

Game Title: Dune: Spice Wars

 

Platforms:

• PC (Apr 26, 2022)

 

Developer: Shiro Games

Publisher: Funcom

 

Review Aggregator:

OpenCritic - 85 average - 100% recommended

 

Critic Reviews

Attack of the Fanboy - Shaun Cichacki - 4.5 / 5

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With a haunting soundtrack, great sound effects, a great visual style that stands out from the crowd, excellent commanding gameplay, and the plethora of options that you'll be able to take to achieve victory, you'll find yourself excited to try to take command of the Spice, even if you end suffering a crushing loss.

IGN - Leana Hafer - 9 / 10

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Dune: Spice Wars is a clever, multilayered, challenging RTS that skillfully translates so much of what is cool about Frank Herbert's universe in its interesting mechanics.

NoobFeed - Yagmur Sevinc - 85 / 100

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There is no campaign quite yet, and there is no information as to whether or not there will ever be one, but as it currently stands, Dune: Spice Wars is a game that could entertain you for a few hours until you get bored of it (or finish victoriously) and move on. It is a fair game, great for newcomers, and based on the Dune franchise: What more could you want?

The Games Machine - Gabriele Barducci - Italian - 8 / 10

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Dune: Spice Wars is an excellent Dune-licensed RTS. The approach to the game mechanics is fresh and functional, net of some various imbalances.

3DNews - Иван Бышонков - Russian - Unscored

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Dune: Spice Wars offers a very good base for a potentially cool strategy.

Gameffine - Arkadyuti Bandyopadhyay - Recommended

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Dune: Spice Wars is perfectly poised to be the meta-defining 4X real-time strategy game in the market. However, the lacklustre amount of game content as well as the repetitive gameplay does hurt the game’s replayability. There also seem to be some performance issues, albeit mild, which hinder the player’s experience. I would definitely recommend waiting out for a sale for this one if you are really keen on trying out another new addition to the strategy genre. If you’re not a big fan of strategy games and just wanted to try the game out because it’s set in the Dune universe, I’d reckon you’d have to look elsewhere.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun - Nic Reuben - Unscored

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This realtime 4X makes great use of Dune's furniture in crafting a compulsive, busy, and well-made strategy game, and its new campaign is a great addition. But the soul of Dune remains elusive, leaving its desert planet feeling barren in the wrong ways.