In “Dune: Part 2,” Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) rallies the Fremen people against the oppressive House Harkonnen, leading to an epic clash that unites characters from across the galaxy that author Frank Herbert first visited in his 1965 science-fiction novel “Dune.”
Director Denis Villeneuve’s sequel, which comes out on Friday, March 1, is a complex portrait of a people at war that has already garnered widespread critical acclaim. Naturally, any game that’s officially tied to it must echo that sense of scale and entanglement — particularly if it’s retailing at $60 — to be worthy of the name.
“I’ll take the games home and play with family, but I’m not a hardcore gamer myself,” said Scott Martins, founder and president of the Denver-based gaming company Dire Wolf. “I play well enough, but not as good as these guys who are tearing apart the game.”
Those hardcore gamers, who are part of the tabletop-gaming world (think Dungeons & Dragons, Settlers of Catan, and other role-playing classics) drove sales at Dire Wolf to new heights during the pandemic, although Martins would not say exactly how many units of his company’s games have sold.
The pinnacle? Their official Dune: Imperium game, which was released in November 2020 ahead of the first “Dune” movie in 2021. The latest version, “Uprising,” came out in November 2023, a few months ahead this week’s “Dune: Part 2” release. That’s made Dire Wolf the first company in 40 years to release a new Dune game.
Not that most Denverites would know it.
“It’s still a hobby board game — it’s not Settlers of Catan or even Monopoly — but it’s done very well,” Martins said during a recent video interview from Dire Wolf’s Capitol Hill offices. “It’s been up there in terms of acclaim since it came out.”
Dire Wolf won the job as part of what’s called the Dune tabletop master license, as license-holder Gale Force Nine calls it, which itself is owned by “Dune” movie producer Legendary Entertainment. Dire Wolf was approached the same day the license was announced at the Gen Con tabletop gaming event in 2018.
“I was a little nervous the first time we went into a meeting about it,” said Paul Dennen, Dire Wolf’s creative director and the designer of the Dune games. “I was worried I wasn’t a big enough fan when this guy was correcting me on my Frank Herbert-isms.
“But (director) Denis didn’t stick to all the pronunciations intended for these words,” he said. “Denis changed the story for his medium, which I think is smart, and we’re allowed to interpret that for our board game.”
Cut to a couple of weeks ago, when Legendary Entertainment flew Martins and Dennen out to Burbank, Calif., just to screen “Dune: Part 2” (“The best day of work in my life,” Martins called it).
It was justified. “Dune: Imperium” is a colorful, cleanly designed game that delves into deck-building — although not the same kind familiar to players of Pokémon or Magic: The Gathering. Players in “Dune: Imperium” draw cards, engage in combat, manage factions, gather resources, and place virtual workers as they battle for victory points.
Reviewers and players have praised its accessibility and single-player mode, watching the game evolve from the base version to expansions and, timed to the release of “Dune: Part 2,” the new Dune Imperium: Uprising, which can work as a standalone game but also plays nicely with the base game and expansions.
Martins and Dennen have plenty of digital-gaming experience, having worked together since their time at Sony Online Entertainment in the mid-2000s. But Dire Wolf didn’t release its first tabletop game (the cult hit Clank!) until 2016, about six years after the company was founded. Taking on the Dune franchise required a “blue collar work ethic,” Martins and Dennen said, and a whole other level of trust as dozens of Dire Wolf workers were separated during the pandemic.
“Really at the start it very much a passion project, and there was no expectation that it would do as well as it has,” Martins said.
Now that the game has racked up international awards and spawned its own live-playing events, Dire Wolf, which counts about 80 employees, is looking to carefully move forward into more digital adaptations of its games.
“I love European games because they’re very mechanical-oriented, but they tend to have thin themes and immersion,” Dennen said. “And I like those old-school, dice-chucking games, too. But I want to bring high excitement to game design. We’re not afraid of randomness to get thrown in so players have to deal with chaos. We’re super-fans of Dune and think these extreme situations lead to a lot of replay value.”
