Excellent game but we all want Uprising FAST

This is an excellent video game adaptation of an excellent board game adaptation of an excellent film adaptation of an excellent book.

It will cost you about half as much as buying a print edition, which sounds nice. But if you do the math, that is actually twice the price for four players who must all buy their own copies. This is somewhat mitigated by a raft of features for solo and online play that aren't part of the paper version. But it would be nice if they sold bundles of copies with price parity to print. Still, it's all very well done, fun, and worth the money. I'm not going to down-vote it.

HOWEVER..

While they deserve all the success they have, I am a bit put off by the direction their product development and marketing seems to be turning. One of the strengths of a really well made game is that you can leverage a big following to keep it alive for many years, and that stability in turn makes people willing to keep buying into it. I think they are risking diluting their player base over too many overlapping versions of this game. They released the original board game in 2020, with two expansions following in 2022, and it was all a deserved critical and commercial success. Then, In 2023 they released an improved revised edition, with a few new mechanics, which perfected an already excellent game. But they clearly didn't want to upset people who had invested in a game barely three years old, so instead they called the revision "Uprising" and presented it as a new base game that was still compatible with all the expansions. OK, fine. The problem is, they seem to be starting a whole new product cycle of revisions, with the Bloodlines expansion coming out this year; from what I've seen of it, it folds in simplified mechanics from Rise of Ix so it's arguably a revision as well. Sure, you can mix all the old stuff together, but it will create a lot of redundant or unintegrated mechanics, and mess with the probabilities, and that sort of defeats the purpose of a revision. It's clearly not the intent.

So if we follow the implied logic of their production cycle, they will release another expansion (revision) for Uprising shortly. Then film production for Villenueve's Messiah begins late this year, which means they will be in a position to release yet another Messiah themed base game non-revision revision in 2026, and two expansions for that. Then what? It will probably be such an oversaturated mess by then that they'll either have to scrap it, or try to market a consolidated big box "final version" to clean up after themselves if they want to keep anything in print. I could be wrong, but it certainly feels like this is their 5 year plan at the moment. But who knows what their licensing is like? Maybe they won't even have the rights by then.

Why is any of this relevant to this review? Well, because if they follow their board game production cycle, in a couple of years from now they will be releasing a digital version of Uprising, which will almost certainly be a standalone application, with its own servers, then DLC for that which replicates the DLC for this. And then maybe they'll do it again 3 years after that. Are you going to play three slightly different versions of this game with their own expansions? I won't, and I'm guessing nobody else will either. People will pick the version they like best and the others will die. They might still BUY them all, and that will make Dire Wolf a crap ton of money, which is their goal. But I suspect it will create tiresome complications for the people actually playing these games. Instead of one big unified set of fans, you will have three waves of exhausted consumers who actively play 1/3 of a convoluted product line and have to negotiate which version they are playing with their friends, which makes it difficult to coordinate or develop as a player.

One more annoyance: I've been waiting for ranked play since this was released, only to discover it is now only available with the Ix DLC. I have no idea whether it will ever make its way to the base game. Probably the development costs were bundled in with the DLC and it will remain exclusive, which feels like a bait and switch.

It's a great game but I think it will soon be a victim of its own success.

As a fan of the Dune saga, I was absolutely thrilled with the PC version of Dune: Imperium. The game cleverly combines tactical depth with addictive gameplay that kept me enthralled for hours. The detailed depiction of the world of Dune, coupled with demanding decisions and strategic challenges, really impressed me. The graphics quality and soundtrack help to create an immersive gaming experience that plunges you straight into the epic world of Dune. I highly recommend Dune: Imperium for anyone who loves strategic games and the Dune universe.