Dune: Spice Wars Early Access Is NEW Spice

There’ll be a new legion of Dune fans after the recent flick, plus there’ll be the fans of the source material intrigued by Dune: Spice Wars. Me? I’m dying to play this RTS coming to Steam Early Access.

Developed by Shiro Games and published by Funcom, we’ll see four factions fight over Arrakis to control the spice. Of the available factions, there’ll be the Atreides, Harkonnen, Smugglers and, of course, the Fremen.

Here’s a summary of the Fremen units:

• Warriors are the bread and butter of Fremen fighters. Armed with long knives, they are experts at using Arrakis terrain to disorient their opponents.
• Infiltrators are so used to the desert that they stay invisible and unheard until they strike with their two knives. Their surprise attacks will always find a weak spot, breaking their opponents’ will and focus.
• Skirmishers have a large supply of grenades. They use them to ambush well armoured units and soften them for their other comrades to finish off.
• Fedaykins are the elite of the Fremen army. Trained in the weirding way and armed with the feared crysknives, they only get stronger the more opponents they face.
• Kulon Caravans are the holders of the clan’s water. While they can fight the invaders with maula rifles, their main function is to set up a hiereg camp. At the camp, all Fremen units will be hidden, healed and resupplied. As such, Kulon caravans are best deployed near remote villages as proxy bases for an attack.

Dune 2 was the first RTS I played, back in the days of the Amiga. In those days of old, we didn’t have the games actively recording how many hours we spent playing, but I’d wager it was easily in the 100s for me. It was a phenomenal game (at the time), and launched a thirst for the genre. No pressure, Shiro Games…

With so many massive Dune fans in the studio, the excitement I see every day of working with this universe is very real, and we hope this comes across in the game… With all this passion for the source material, and all the know-how we’ve gathered from making Northgard, we can’t wait to put this game into players’ hands.

Sebastien Vidal, CEO of Shiro Games

No video link for Dune: Spice Wars, I’m afraid. Instead, I can point you in the direction of the Steam page and confirm the release date is set for the 26th of April. I’d be very surprised if I get a code for this [update: As expected – no, but I shall be buying in due course. Eff the system! Power to the people!]. Fortunately, Early Access is for everyone if they have the pennies.