Westwood wasn’t the only studio publishing Dune video games at the time. French studio Cryo Interactive developed an adventure game simply called Dune and released it in 1992, and in 2001 released a tie-in with a Sci Fi Channel miniseries called Frank Herbert’s Dune, developed by Widescreen Games. The latter fell through and Cryo Interactive, already struggling due to his early 2000s recession, declared bankruptcy.
This left the Soft Brigade in trouble. Hungarian studio he collaborated with Cryo Interactive to create arcade his flight simulation “Dune: Ornithopter Assault” for Game Boy Advance. In this game, Arrakis played the Atreides pilot, defending the spice harvester from Harkonnen. Similar to an online RTS called Dune Generations, which was being developed internally by Cryo Networks, was canceled despite being nearly finished. The playable ROMs eventually leaked online, but thanks to crowdfunding, Soft Brigade’s games are still alive.
After raising $21,222 kick starter (opens in new tab), the game formerly known as Dune: Ornithopter Assault is finally complete. Unlicensed for Dune, renamed his Elland: The Crystal Wars, and brought to his PC by Retro Room Games, which specializes in game preservation.
Instead of Arrakis, it’s set in Elland, a world where the Brem Narr crystals, essential for building the Galactic Star Cruiser, are mined. As Elland Inc.’s raptor pilot, it’s your job to deliver crystal his gatherers to crystal fields and prevent rival smugglers and agents of his Trafford Corp. from destroying them. It has 23 levels and some modern quality of life features such as the ability to save anywhere, controller support and control remapping, cloud saving, and image scaling and smoothing options.
Elland: The Crystal Wars vapor (opens in new tab) As of October 3. As for Dune’s official video games, the 4x strategy game Dune: Spice Wars is currently in early access, and Funcom is working on three of his Dune games, among them the open-world survival MMO Dune Awakening. However, no release date has been announced yet.
