Dune Imperium | The spirit of Dune in a board game

With the very early arrival of the film Dune on our screens, several board games inspired by the universe imagined by Frank Herbert have been released on the shelves. We tested the game Dune Imperium, which proves to be up to the incredible enthusiasm generated by the new feature film by Quebecer Denis Villeneuve.

Pierre-Marc Durivage
Press

“There are diagrams that intersect between game enthusiasts and fans of science fiction and fantasy, so we felt the buzz in the game world, everyone was only talking about Dune, recognizes Pierre-Louis Renaud, one of the hosts of the popular web channel Are you Game ? Dune, three years ago, it was pretty dark, and suddenly it’s like it’s become The Lord of the Rings ! Personally, I’m really happy because I would like there to be other exceptional franchises that can earn this notoriety. ”

Conversely, the renewed popularity and expected success of the film could attract fans of the saga to turn to the game, allowing them to discover a playful universe. “It could certainly arouse the curiosity of people who do not normally play board games,” said Pierre-Louis Renaud, who reviewed the game on the YouTube channel ofAre you Game ?

For testing

We tested the game ourselves with a few experienced players, and this is precisely one of the observations that emerges: “Dune Imperium is complex, but not complicated, that is to say that the minute where you learned the rules, it’s easy to play, explains our first tester. But because it is complex, starting by reading the rules can take a long time, and that is probably its only flaw. But now that we all know how to play, if we play again in a week, the game will suddenly be much shorter. ”

The game imagined by Paul Dennen (also creator of the popular Clank!) Is actually a skillful hybrid between a game of worker placement and pickaxe construction (deck-building). Each player embodies the role of a character from the saga represented by a card illustrated by one of the characters from Denis Villeneuve’s film – Paul Atréides indeed looks like Timothée Chalamet, Duke Leto Atréides in Oscar Isaac or Glossu Rabban in Dave Bautista, to name a few.

The objective is to earn victory points by gaining influence with the main factions in the game, while winning the conflicts that erupt on the surface of Dune – this requires ensuring a constant supply of water, in Spices and Solaris. Players who know how to best organize their deck of cards will be at an advantage, the same goes for those who make judicious placements of agents on the game board. However, some cards drawn during the game can also change the game at the very end. portion.

“I played again recently and it is indeed a good game of deck-building, but it also represents the aspect of the confrontation present in Dune, with elements of bluff and unknown, emphasizes for his part Pierre-Louis Renaud. You are never sure what people have in hand, which reflects the first volume of Frank Herbert’s saga, it fits very well with the tension that is created in the game.

If we do not yet know whether Denis Villeneuve will be able to shoot the sequel to Dune On the big screen, publisher Dire Wolf has just launched Rise of Ix, the first expansion of Dune Imperium, which features new factions, new technologies, spies and a new game mode, among others. This is without counting the release in recent weeks of a role-playing game in the same theme developed by Modiphius or Dune House Secrets, a cooperative investigation game taking place in four episodes with the help of an application. web. In short, the playful universe of Dune is already well stocked!