PC Preview Code Provided by Shiro Games
From the critically hailed developers Shiro Games (Northgard, Evoland series) and publisher Funcom comes Dune: Spice Wars, a real-time strategy game with 4X elements. In case the term isn’t familiar to you, 4X stands for: Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Exterminate. Lots of games have 4X elements, some are entirely based around it, but the difference with Spice Wars is that these elements are interwoven with a traditional real-time strategy game in different ways than previous games have attempted.
Gameplay
Dune: Spice Wars is a turn-based strategy game. The overall play is familiar and comfortable to use. The game has a lot of moving parts, and the opening tutorials can feel a little daunting at first play, even as someone familiar with traditional RTS and 4X games. Spice Wars is a game that requires a decent level of mastery to do well. Overall, the User Interface is easy to navigate, and the tutorials, though numerous, do a good job of explaining the game’s systems in simple ways.
As the saying goes, the spice must flow, and that’s incredibly true for Spice Wars. The overall gameplay loop revolves around exploring territories with ornithopters to find spice. Once you’ve found it, it’s a matter of sending out your military units to capture or pillage settlements and setting up your spice gathering operation. Rinse, repeat, and defend your expanding territories from unaligned raiders and the other three factions vying for control of Arrakis. Resource management is always a concern, and finding the right balance of the game’s various assets is a difficult one.
Expectations
If I had one major criticism of Dune: Spice Wars, it’s that everything moves much too slowly. Soldiers move at a snail’s pace, buildings take incredibly long to construct, and battles are too slow to feel strategic. If I were to hazard a guess, I would think that the developers are trying to go with a more realistic approach to the game as far as time is concerned. The problem is that it interrupts the flow of gameplay, and occasionally leaves the player with nothing to do. Speeding up the overall pace of the game would go a long way to alleviate these problems.
One thing I would love to see added to the game is a proper campaign mode that takes players through the story of Dune. Also, as of this writing, the game’s multiplayer mode is still not available. I am excited to try it out once it is, however.
Verdict
Dune: Spice Wars is not a game for everyone, but it’s certainly a game for me. The setting, the music, the visuals, all the set dressing and props are there for something special, but the game needs to be rebalanced in terms of pacing and time if it’s going to reach any sort of competitive play. At the speed with which the game moves now, I cannot imagine tournament play being terribly compelling.
Shiro Games has planned an extensive roadmap of the game through Early Access, to include “more features and content, improved balance, and new game modes… based on the crucial input of the community.”
Dune: Spice Wars is now available on Steam Early Access.
