Don’t have any plans this weekend? Actually, scratch that– do you not have any plans from now until Thursday?
In that case, you may want to try out the latest free game trial for one of 2025’s most-hyped open-world survival games over on Steam, because you’ve got until November 27 to properly sink your teeth into it.
Dune: Awakening was, for a short time at least, easily one of 2025's most talked-about games back in June.
Why? Well, the release of Dune: Part Two the year prior definitely helped build some of the hype, but honestly… it just looked pretty fun.
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Maybe we were all just too keen to move on to the next big beige multiplayer game in the wake of Helldivers II, but Dune: Awakening did manage to earn itself a big following when it first dropped.
The game even managed to hit a pretty impressive all-time peak of 189,333 a mere week after its release, so clearly the marketing team was doing something right.
Oh, uh– before I get into this next bit, I should probably quickly tell you that, according to an official post on Dune: Awakening’s website, the game is currently free to play for the next five days on Steam! Yay!
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Alright, now, bottle that enthusiasm and enjoy it while it lasts, because there seems to be a good reason we haven’t heard much about the game since June.
If you take a look at the Steam store page for Dune: Awakening, you’ll immediately notice two things: firstly, it has a respectable overall “Mostly Positive” review score… and right above it, there’s a not-so-respectable “Mixed” recent review score.
So what’s happened in the months since we last heard of this game? Not much, apparently– and that seems to be the problem.
I had a browse through the most recent reviews, and even the positive ones are all complaining of the same problem: the endgame for Dune: Awakening sucks.
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It seems that once you polish off the main lot of content that the game has to offer, you may as well just stop playing, because the reviewers (many of whom have hundreds of hours of playtime) say the endgame is just too much of a slog to bother with.
That probably also explains why the player numbers on Steam are dwindling at the moment, as it seems it’s averaged out at around 7,000-ish concurrent daily players.
But hey, it sounds like the free trial actually gives you access to the part of the game that players enjoyed, so maybe it is still worth a go?
Just do your research if you fancy purchasing the game after the trial is up, just in case.