Dune: Spice Wars behind the scenes video shows how the studio is expanding the book's story

Dune: Spice Wars studio Shiro Games has given fans a behind-the-scenes look at the upcoming RTS game. 

In the video, shared to the IGN YouTube channel, developer Shiro Games gives us our first look at the upcoming Dune game since it was first announced during the 2021 Game Awards. In contrast to the first trailer we saw, in this one we get to see snippets of the game whilst it is still in development as the team at Shiro Games talks us through the process. 

In the video, we are introduced to marketing director Adrien Briatta who explains that this interpretation of the classic sci-fi world "is mainly based on the books" and that the Dune novels "have been our basis for the whole production." As a Dune fan themselves, Briatta reassures fans by adding: "We really wanted to give the Dune fans our own interpretation of what we think is the Dune universe."

Lead programmer on the project, Tom Rethaller, also gave an insight into the look of Dune: Spice Wars revealing that: "The planet Arrakis is made of sand and rocks and we learned, doing research on this project, that there are many types of deserts actually, all colors can exist and we contacted a geologist who taught us everything about the structures underneath deserts."

The trailer also features the community director and 3D animator on Dune: Spice Wars who both share an insight into their work on the project, with the animator giving us a sneak peek at a potential upcoming character, and the community director sharing how the team would lurk in forums and Discord servers before the game was announced to try and gauge interest in RTS and 4X games. 

Finally, we hear from Briatta again who confidently reassures fans by describing Dune: Spice Wars as: "The strategy game that you want, need, and deserve." Unfortunately, we still don’t know exactly how long we have to wait to try this game out for ourselves. What we do know though is that it will arrive through early access on Steam sometime in 2022. 

Find out what else you’ll be playing next year with our new games 2022 list. 

Hope Bellingham
News Writer

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training.  My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.