Dune: Awakening’s Deep Desert Coriolis Storms Shift the Landscape Itself, Changing the Map

A new exploration video and blog reveal the massive scale and freedom of Arrakis.

Oslo, Norway – March 13, 2025 – On May 20, Dune: Awakening, the first-ever open-world, multiplayer survival game set on Arrakis, will launch. In today’s new video, Funcom is proud to show the scale and scope of the desert planet, which is inspired by Frank Herbert’s legendary sci-fi novel and Legendary Entertainment’s award-winning films. Discover what lies beyond the horizon in Exploring Arrakis – Secrets of the Desert.

Although a desert planet, Arrakis is surprisingly diverse, as showcased in the recent Beauty of Arrakis video. Reveal the resources of your immediate surroundings through your personal scanner and modules attached to your vehicles, or climb the highest peaks to launch a survey probe that fills in a large area of your map, including important points of interest, like shipwrecks or ecology labs.

The huge, ever-changing end-game area, the Deep Desert, beckons with one hand and threatens with the other, as spice blows and Coriolis storms fill the sky. These fatal planetary storms sweep across the map regularly, changing the map every time, revealing new resources and locations while burying the old. When the dust settles, players can scout the fresh land, making maps to sell on the Exchange to other players.

Exploration is essential in Dune: Awakening, but only part of the whole. Keep an eye out for the next video, which will address Dune: Awakening’s sandbox combat.

Dune: Awakening arrives on May 20. Players can download the Character Creator & Benchmark Mode right now on Steam to fully prepare their character ahead of launch and receive the exclusive Frameblade Knife skin.