Play Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty Online

Pick a house, scramble for spice, and try not to lose everything when a sandworm shows up—your harvester’s always first on the menu. Build carefully, because the desert eats weak bases, and watch for enemy units creeping out of the fog.

Developer: Westwood Studios

Genre: Real-time strategy (RTS)

Released: 1992

File size: 3.68 MB

Game Overview

Dune II is one of those games that feels ancient now but basically invented the RTS genre as we know it. You pick one of three houses—Atreides, Harkonnen, or the sneaky Ordos (who weren’t even in the books)—and fight over spice on Arrakis. The first thing you’ll do? Panic because your harvester just got eaten by a sandworm. Again.

It’s all about managing spice income while building up your base on rocky terrain—build on sand and your structures slowly crumble. The fog of war lifts permanently when you explore, which is nice, but you’ll still jump when an enemy unit suddenly rolls into view. And those spice blooms? Step on one and boom, free spice (and a dead unit).

Clunky by today’s standards, but you can see the DNA of Command & Conquer and Warcraft in here. Just don’t expect fancy pathfinding—your units love getting stuck on each other.

Each game uses different controls, most DOS games use the keyboard arrows. Some will use the mouse , "Alt" ,"Enter" and "Space bar".