Shiro Games' latest title RTS ideas presented in Dune II. The game was first announced during the 2021 Game Awards, and comes from the same studio that created the Norse mythology RTS title Northgard and open-world RPG Wartales.
Dune: Spice Wars draws more inspiration from Frank Herbert's books rather than Dune's film adaptations, and prides itself on letting players create their own stories while still existing within the world of the IP. The game is slightly more 4X than RTS - although players will participate in real-time battles, they also have the option to pause at any time to consider their strategy and will need to focus on things like territory control, forming political alliances, and money making if they want to succeed. The game has recently added a multiplayer mode that allows player versus player competition, and in the future there are plans to add features like a House creation system which will allow players to customize their experience even further.
Shiro Games' Head of Marketing and Publishing Adrien Briatta sat down with Screen Rant to discuss what players can expect from Dune: Spice Wars in of its combat and strategy, as well as the game's development and design process and what's in store for the title in the future.
I'm very excited to talk about bringing Dune to life in this new way, through a real-time strategy 4x approach, which I believe has never been done before. What are your personal favorite elements or characters from Dune that you were most excited to bring to life in this new game?
Adrien Briatta: One thing to understand is that at the beginning of the project, we didn't really realize what we were dealing with. A lot of us have read Dune when we were young, and the opportunity that Funcom gave us with the IP was really a challenge.
We were really impressed that once we announced the game at the Video Games Awards last year, things just exploded. The discord counted 10,000 people in like two days, and people started talking a lot about the lore and everything. They really were hoping for the best possible strategy game for Dune - and some of them were hoping for a follow-up to Dune II, which our game is definitely not. But now I think people have understood that this is our own interpretation of what's in the books, and the books are the main reference materials. We did not take too much inspiration from the Villeneuve movie, because we started developing the game a lot before the movie came out. In of the timetable, it was not possible.
As for my favorite characters, I always was a fan of mystic stuff. I always loved the way Fremen interact with their planet. That's also my favorite faction in the game. The way they can travel through the map with the sandworms and deal with their environment adds a lot of asymmetrical, interesting stuff in comparison to the other factions. It's not an easy one, in of gameplay, and it's not always easy to play them. But still, it's a very interesting faction for us.
Speaking of the sandworms, I'm sure a ton of readers are very curious about how those mechanics work in the game. How will players have to deal with those as they're trying to gain control of the Dune?
Adrien Briatta: The game is still in early access, so what I'm telling you right now may change.
Because sandworms always have been a challenge to deal with gameplay wise, what we really wanted to have in this game is the permanent feeling that something very bad can happen if the player takes an army and walks through the desert. We had those little waves coming on the sand, showing that a sandworm might come and eat your army if you make too much noise, or the sand is too agitated. You need to get the hell out, because things might turn pretty ugly for your people. That's a feeling that we really wanted to have.
On the other side, the permanent threat that it adds makes the game quite stressful, so we also added options that allow the player to ease things up. For example, when you have your harvesters collecting the space and there's a sandworm warning, there's automatically a carrier that comes and takes your harvesters. This feature had a mixed feeling among the players - and when I say mixed, I mean people loved and hated it. Some people just wanted to feel the harshness of the desert and suffer and everything, while others really wanted to keep it laidback and relaxed.
I know that with this one, even though it's real time strategy, you can still pause the game to think about your next move. It's not quite as fast-paced and still has those 4X elements.
Adrien Briatta: The game is pretty slow. We really intended to be a 4X with RTS elements. We actually wanted to have the combat organization around the RTS aspect, because it's very interesting gameplay wise and game design wise. It's pretty cool to design and to find ideas to make the synergies between units work. Everything is more challenging but also more interesting while in an RTS.
In solo game, people can pause the game, they can think about their next move and everything. It's pretty safe. But multiplayer is going to come in a few weeks, and it's getting announced at E3. That's going to change some things - in of balancing, it's going to be a nightmare, but it's gonna be cool to do. The pace of the game will be impacted a lot, because people will not have the opportunity to pause the game. That's something that we have to take into .
The game goes through different steps. The early game is really about building the economy, and there's a lot of little building tasks: conquering villages; fighting the environment more than other players. Which means that part of the game will be more focused with diplomacy and encountering new people; trying to develop your research abilities to advance into the tech tree and that kind of stuff.
The late game is going to be much more army fights, economic victory, and diplomatic victory - that kind of stuff. The pace of the game, while being slow, will have different paces to it because the player has to cope with a lot of information. I'm sure people will love playing against each other. That's going to be super cool to see.
I read that doing the art design for the environment was tricky, because so much it could just be sand and rocks, so you worked with a geologist in the design of the game. What was that like?
Adrien Briatta: It was really interesting, actually. There was not an infinite number of colors for the sand to have, so it was challenging to find different aspects of the desert that could that could really give this sense of, "This is still desert, but it's very diverse depending on where the action is taking place."
Working with this specialist was really interesting, in the way that he could explain why the geological stuff was happening in this desert. It also helped us in improving the differences between regions. You have the very dry and hot desert where there's a lot of wind. Over there, there's no resources or water or anything. When your units come through this desert, their supply drops a lot, and you need to be careful for them to not stay too long this desert.
Then you have other types of desert, which are rockier and easier to build on, with boosts to different aspects of the game. He helped a lot on that. Also, of course, he sent us countless photos for the designers to take inspiration from. We have salt [pans], we have the Rocky Mountains, and some stone monuments that are also pretty cool.
In of character design, I know it can be difficult because every Dune fan has their own internal image of what these characters look like. How did you try to balance what people were expecting and the visual style that you wanted to go with?
Adrien Briatta: When you deal with this kind of IP, it's always a challenge. I would say it's easier when you're dealing with Star Wars IP, for example, because an X-Wing is an X-Wing.
When dealing with a book-based IP, you have to take into that people will expect something. Usually people expect what they've seen last, so the movie. However, we were not permitted to copy what was in the movie, and we also didn't have the designs of the movies when we developed the game. So, we had to make our own interpretation.
The artistic director on Dune [Jeremy Vitry] is the same that was on Northgard and Evoland. The characters are cartoonish, I would say, but the aesthetic is very polished and colorful. Super cool to see. As for the designs themselves, I guess it was related to the character's personality. An aggressive faction like the Harkonnens could have their personality shown through the design of the leader.
But we have also super cool stuff planned in the future to add even more personality to the different factions, and we're adding new functions. Each time we do that, we'll take positions in certain ways as we receive the books. And we'll see if people will like it.
It's a difficult balance between taking some influence from other beloved games like Dune II, and making something that's distinctly your own Dune. Could you talk a little bit more about what process was like?
Adrien Briatta: There was a lot of concepts that were pretty difficult to deal with, especially in a 4X game. You have this very macro vision, and see the world from very above. Then you have the very straightforward problems that are in the books, like water. How do you deal with water in a 4X game? It's pretty difficult, because it can be a resource but also not really. For Fremen, for example, water is generated by their own body. You need to find innovative way to cope with these problematics.
Dune II wasn't really an issue, because it wasn't really an inspiration. We didn't take a lot of stuff from the game, but we wanted to reach the same level of enjoyment that people had when they used to play Dune II. The game really is our interpretation of the Dune universe, and we wanted to show that as much as possible.
There were also some problems with the way the Dune licenses right now; the fact that there should not be wheels. In the Dune universe, there isn't wheels. Vehicles cannot drive in the sun. so they had to be reimagined it. The harvesters don't have wheels; they have chains. And it works, but design changes have to be taken into .
That's the case with every single little aspect of the game. For example, the factions' logos have to have their own characteristics, but they also have to not be too close to the movies. Because there used to be no official thing and now there are comic books, but we are not based on the comic books, it's a bit of a mess. You have to kind of do your own thing and try to try to find a good compromise.
Right now, there's four different houses or factions that players can choose from. But I read that in the future, you're thinking about a house creation system. What do you envision that being like?
Adrien Briatta: That's one of the projects we have, but it's not official. It's something that could be interesting to do in the future. We will add new factions, and we're already working on the next one; that should be the following update after multiplayer.
We're trying to see how things could move, and faction creation is something that we always wanted to do with Northgard. It's really difficult to do, because the game is a bit too vast in of differences between factions. We're not sure about what kind of gameplay mechanics it will have but, in a specialized mode or creation of hubs, that could be that could be pretty interesting.
Has it been difficult making the AI of each faction behave like the characterizations of each house, in of their strategy and their demeanor?
Adrien Briatta: We're used to doing these sorts of things. In Northgards, all the clans have their own characteristics. Like, if you play against the clan of the wolf, it will be much more likely to attack you than if you play against the clan of the goat.
That was not really a big challenge for us. We know about this sort of coding, and we have very, very talented coders that know a lot about AI. I know it still needs to be perfected, but it's on route.
I'm in the Discord server for the game, and people were discussing the way different houses act while trying to form treaties. That mechanic still a little unbalanced for some people, but in general it seems that the houses are acting as they should.
Adrien Briatta: Yeah. We are working on fixing most of the issues that we have with that. There's a diplomatic update planned for it on down the line during early access, just to cope with the different discrepancies between what they should do and what they actually do. Like, the Fremen should value more aggression against neutral villages, and now they don't really. We have to work on that; we know.
For readers who don't know, you worked on a different strategy game based on Norse mythology called Northgard. What lessons did you take away from that into this new game? What did you realize you didn't want in this game?
Adrien Briatta: It's more about how we can transpose the things that worked really well. The game are similar because they are strategic games, but they are very different in their basics, so we needed to find the best way to take things from Northgard and put them into Dune.
I think the decision of putting multiplayer as the first update after release of early access is based on how people reacted to Northgard early access. They clearly stated that they wanted the multiplayer as soon as possible, so that always was part of the plan. In the way lobbies are created for the multiplayer update, we took a lot of stuff that we learned from Northgard.
In the difference between factions, something that was even more important in Dune is that people love when different factions really impact the way early game, mid-game, and late game is happening for you. Because the houses in Dune are so different from each other, we really had to focus on getting things. Early games for the Fremen is a bit different from early game for Atreides. Atreides can colorize freely some villages to expand more quickly, but Harkonnens can already send military synergies from the beginning of the game. That's interesting. We had to really cope with the houses.
Other than that, I think that we took a lot of development experience from Northgard. Of course, the random generation of the map was super useful to have, and those sort of things.
Besides Northgard, what real time strategy and 4X games would you say most inspired this game?
Adrien Briatta: We are huge players of the Civilization games. We also had the latest Humankind game, as far as 4X games. But there were also some things that were taken or inspired from grand strategy games such as Stellaris or Crusader Kings, like the way relations between factions worked and that kind of stuff.
When adapting from an IP, especially when doing your best to follow the book, there's bound to be a few things that just can't translate to the game and you have to change. Did you come across anything like that in adapting Dune into a game?
Adrien Briatta: I think that the main problem is the story, actually. We chose, for example, to have Duke Leto as the leader for House Atreides. If you think about it, it could have been Paul. But how do you deal with Paul?
People are asking us, "Will Paul be in the game? Is he going to be a counselor or something like that?" It's a pretty difficult answer to give, because we don't want to do the whole story. It's going to be super difficult, and it's going to be a nightmare regarding IP management and everything. That's not a good idea.
The way we deal with the characters is pretty difficult. It's also pretty freeing, meaning that we think about the game being in an alternate universe. Starting from the beginning of the book, when the Atreides arrive on Arrakis, we try to see what the possibilities are. This also is something that allows us to bring new houses onto Arrakis, even if they are not on Arrakis in the book. It adds a lot of potential, regarding future updates and that kind of stuff.
So, yeah, the fact that we are separated from the book was an issue. But now, it's more of an advantage.
Is there anything you want readers to know about this game, specifically?
Adrien Briatta: One of the things that we really want to focus on is the live phase of the game. The launch was super cool; we had great results, people loved the game, and we built a wonderful community that is crazy active. Now we're in the perfect spot to lead the way towards the rest of the development.
Early access will last few more months - up to a year, we're not sure - depending on how the community reacts to the future updates that we do. And we really want to focus on having big updates that we really want to add to the game, like the multiplayer mode. That's something we really want to do.
And then an update dedicated entirely to what the community wants; we call them community updates, which we did Northgard, and we really want to do it for Dune. We already released one a few weeks after launch. This is basically covering everything that the community wants to see inside the game - and we think is interesting, of course. It helps us in building solid ground for what what comes next.
If everything goes well, we clearly can imagine that the game will have the same kind of life that Northgard has, which is still getting updates five years after launch and is still performing really well, both for multiplayer and single player mode. It's a blast for us to be able to keep a team on a game that is that old, just because people enjoy playing it. We clearly hope that it's going to be the same for Dune.
Dune: Spice Wars is available in early access for PC via Steam and the Humble Bundle Store.