Arrakis

When I first saw a screenshot of Arrakis, I knew I was in for a long journey across a sandy wasteland. This year 2000 game throws you straight into the world of Dyn Arrakis — a planet so inhospitable that only those who can read the terrain and manage water like it's worth its weight in gold will survive.

It's essentially a real-time strategy with resource management elements. Your units — ordinary soldiers with faces painted in sixteen-bit graphics — move across the map in individual missions, collecting minerals, building bases, and clashing with the enemy. There's not much room for a deeper story here; rather, you're cast as a military commander whose only concern is making sure your units do their job and don't leave you crying against the wall.

The controls are classic for the era — click a unit, mark its path, build a structure, and wait to see if it survives. The game isn't particularly complex or elegant. The graphics are clunky, unit animations look like robots walking with a locked knee, and the sounds — well, they're there to fill the silence. What makes Arrakis interesting, though, is precisely that pessimistic expression with which every unit goes about caring for the planet. There's no enthusiasm here, just duty.

For the year 2000, it was a kind of bold move — unglamorous, without Hollywood pathos, with an interface that won't give you wrinkles. Given that the story takes a back seat and everything is really about eliminating the enemy and completing the objective, Arrakis ages surprisingly well. It's not some remastered glory, but your head won't turn left or right either.

Today you'll play it if you're into old strategies without grand ambitions, where "build that, go there, grab it, victory" is enough. There are no surprises here. No plot twists. Just a world that wants you dead, and your brain trying to prevent it. You'll remember something like that pretty fondly after twenty years.