After many years out of print, the game was reissued by Gale Force Nine in 2019 in advance of the 2021 Dune film adaptation.

[1] Avalon Hill had acquired the license to produce a Dune game, but when their design proved unusable, the company contacted Eberle, Kittredge and Olotka.

[1] In 1984, to tie in with the Dune film, Avalon Hill published a second edition[1] of the game as well as two expansions, Spice Harvest and The Duel.

[2] The Spice Harvest[3] expansion changes the initial setup of the standard game by adding a pre-game in which the factions lobby for control of the inter-world Spice market in order to purchase a more advantageous initial position for the start of the main game (control for the planet of Arrakis).

[8][11] With the demise of Avalon Hill, Dune remained out of print for many years despite being a highly regarded board game.

The game board, which is based on the book's original map, represents the planet's northern hemisphere.

The planet's permanent coriolis storm moves along the radial sections, destroying any troops in its way.

If two or more players enter the same territory, a battle ensues and the contest is resolved using a hidden bidding system based on troop numbers, leaders, and possible treachery cards.

Attacks and defenses affecting leaders are chosen in secret by the players from their available treachery cards.

This win condition represents a situation where the Fremen have prevented interference with their own plans for Dune.

This win condition represents the situation where the Guild has preserved the status quo on Dune and may continue to provide shipping services.

However they may predict that the Fremen or the Guild will win in turn 10 by the normal majority stronghold occupancy criteria.

"[18] In Issue 77 of the UK magazine Games & Puzzles, Nick Palmer was impressed, writing, "The ability of the game to bring out the delicate power balance in the planetary power struggle depicted by the book is nothing short of extraordinary — and yet the rules occupy a mere three pages!"

"[19] In the December 1993 edition of Dragon (Issue 200), Allen Varney considered Dune a classic, saying "Unique flavor comes with the movement rules, combat strategies, and chances that your leaders will turn traitor."

However, Varney advised "Don’t bother with the unbalanced advanced rules that Avalon Hill foisted on the clean basic design.

In Dune, he noted, there is no artificial balance, no "Arthurian circularity" to the game table: the various player positions have wildly differing strengths and weaknesses, and the unfairness of the world setup makes "a seductive point of entry".

More importantly, that unfairness presses players into complex social relations and moral quandaries rarely found in games.

[21] Tom Mendelsohn, in a retrospective review from Ars Technica, stated that the game was "moderately popular" during its release, but commented that the 1984 re-release was commercially unsuccessful.

The reviewer additionally complimented the tenseness, the combat as a "state-of-the-art" mechanic that is a "battle of wits and bluffing", and praised the hidden information and "bursts of chaos".

[22] Similar to Mendelsohn, who commented that Dune "features more than a few rough edges courtesy of how ahead of its time it was", Luke Plunkett from Kotaku observed that the game had "rough edges", criticising that "If a major publisher was pitched Dune in 2020 they’d likely tear it to pieces, aghast at how so many of this game’s features are seemingly worthless, overpowered or both at the same time."

Nonetheless, he praised that the "elastic nature" of victory conditions and "treachery lurking", and complimented the engagement in consequence of "unpredictability and unfairness".