Discover the untold stories behind the games of Dune
From video games to board games, CCGs to RPGs, find out how your favourite Dune game came to be.
Through painstaking research and exclusive interviews with designers and creatives, this book tells you the untold stories behind the Dune games you love.
You’ll get the the behind-the-scenes story of how the designers took Frank Herbert’s novel and created your favourite Dune games.
- Future Pastimes’ Dune boardgame
- Cryo Interactive’s Dune
- Westwood Studios’ Dune II, Dune 2000, and Emperor: Battle for Dune
- Last Unicorn Games’ Eye of the Storm CCG and Chronicles of the Imperium RPG
- Widescreen Games’ Frank Herbert’s Dune
- Cryo Networks’ ‘Dune Generations’
- Soft Brigade’s ‘Ornithopter Assault’
If you’re a fan of Dune, games, or Dune games, this book is for you. Get your copy today.
How do you make a Dune game?
It turns out, making a game based on Dune isn’t easy.
Every game based on Frank Herbert’s novel faced its own trials and tribulations.
Guild Navigator Edric almost killed the Dune board game.
A peculiarly ‘French’ vision got Cryo’s Dune cancelled; except the team refused to stop working.
Risqué artwork nearly stopped the Eye of the Storm CCG in its tracks.
And bankruptcy meant we never got to see ‘Dune Generations’ come to life; but the secrets are finally revealed here.
But these stories aren’t only of problems.
There’s also the amazing story of how Jack Reda’s love of the original Dune board game led him to landing a job working on the rerelease 15 years later.
And the story of how a new team of developers charted the untold chapters of Dune for Frank Herbert’s Dune.
Or how time constraints led artist Mark Zug to create some of the most stunning artwork for the Eye of the Storm CCG.
All of these stories and more can be found in this book. Hours of painstaking research and countless exclusive interviews have revealed untold stories and forgotten secrets for Calling the Makers.
Your copy is waiting for you.
My path to Dune
I wrote Calling the Makers all because I took the “wrong” route to Dune.
My first experience of Dune was Cryo Interactive’s 1992 video game. It led me to the novel, but by then it was too late. While I read Frank Herbert’s books, it was the Cryo graphics I saw as I pictured Arrakis, and it was the Cryo voice actors I heard as I read dialogue.
I reread Dune every few years. But I replay Dune once a year.
I’d often imagined how great a making-of book for Cryo’s Dune would be. But no-one made it. So I set out to do it myself, and encountered some incredible stories on the way.
Such as how there was a Dune game built and ready to ship for the GameBoy Advance called ‘Ornithopter Assault’ that never reached shelves.
Or how Jack Reda’s love of the original Dune board game led him to land a job working on the rerelease 15 years later.
And a personal favourite, how a legal misunderstanding almost meant that the Dune Eye of the Storm CCG never got made at all.
I learnt a lot writing this book, and any gamer who loves Dune will find a story in here they want to read. Pick up your copy today. I hope you’ll enjoy it.
