Loosely following the story of the novel, the game casts the player as Paul Atreides, with the ultimate goal of driving the House Harkonnen from the planet Arrakis, while managing spice extraction, military, and, later, ecology through the native Fremen tribes.

As the player progresses, his troops are equipped with weapons from "crysknives" to atomics, tap into Paul's latent psychic powers, and get acquainted with such characters from the novel as Chani and Liet-Kynes.

Released for the Amiga and IBM PC compatibles, it was one of the first floppy games to be converted to CD format, which included footage of the David Lynch film, voice-acting for all speaking roles, and improved 3D-rendered traveling and location screens.

The audio track, created by Stéphane Picq and Philip Ulrich, was released by Cryo (formerly Exxos) on the album Dune: Spice Opera.

Duke Leto accepts the offer not only to gain the incredible wealth that comes from Spice trading, but also to utilize the native peoples of Arrakis - the fearsome tribal warriors known as the Fremen - against House Harkonnen.

The player is also required to do some mini-quests involving talking to characters and traveling to locations, which adds a small adventure game element.

However, if there is too much focus on spice mining, Harkonnen troops can ambush a sietch, capturing the soldiers inside and reducing available military strength.

The strategy layer shows the entire planet Arrakis and allows surveying (and later controlling) Paul's assets in the Spice-mining effort and the fight against the Harkonnen.

As the story progresses, more and more options become available, mirroring Paul's gradual growth as a leader to the Fremen and a danger to House Harkonnen and the Emperor.

Conversations in Dune are interactive to a limited degree, with the player able to occasionally select responses in order to advance the plot – but most dialogue options simply command the other character to divulge pertinent strategic information, or to carry out some relevant action in the game world.

For example, Duncan Idaho can be asked to give a detailed report on the current status of the Atreides Spice-mining operation, or to send a shipment of Spice to the Emperor.

Soon enough, Paul is sent out by his father Duke Leto to contact the local Fremen tribes and attempt to convince them to work for House Atreides, which has no military or spice-mining forces of its own.

These are received in a communications room at the palace and must be fulfilled within a certain period of time, otherwise the game will end with the Emperor invading Dune and destroying the Atreides.

This adds a dimension of gameplay wherein the player must calculate how often they must return to Arrakeen (Atreides Palace), since each shipment requires manual confirmation.

Spice also serves as a currency that can be used to purchase additional mining (and later military) equipment from Smuggler camps, which will be marked on the map as the game progresses.

Eventually, the Harkonnen will attack one of the sietches and take one of the tribes prisoner, at which point Duke Leto will go on a retaliatory suicide mission and be killed.

This scripted event pushes the game into the next stage: creating a military force to defend sietches and ultimately take the fight into Harkonnen territory.

If a battle is won, Paul might be able to interrogate to fortress' previous commander for more information and possibly release any tribes held captive there.

An alternative (or complementary) option to direct combat is to start a terraforming project on Dune, setting certain tribes to work on ecology.

This method is very time-consuming and will destroy any potential spice-mining prospects in the affected areas, but in conjunction with the military campaign can nevertheless pay off strategically.

Furthermore, the Fremen will eventually teach Paul to ride sandworms (as an alternative to Ornithopter flight), which can be used to approach Harkonnen fortresses more safely and further increase the odds of victory in battle.

[3] Rémi Herbulot met with Martin Alper in Los Angeles to pitch three video games, all with strong science fiction elements.

[3] To give the development team a more defined framework, Philippe Ulrich created a new label within Virgin Interactive: Cryo Entertainment.

[7] In early 1991, the Gulf War seemed to echo the themes of Dune and Ulrich was inspired to integrate images recalling the night bombing of Baghdad into the game.

[3] In April 1991, Sega bought Virgin's European operations and Cryo lost Jean-Martial Lefranc, its intermediary with the publisher's general management.

Their new manager, Christian Brecheteau, discovered that Virgin Entertainment had financed Cryo in secret, but fortunately expressed interest in the project.

Members of the Cryo team rushed to London to meet with Martin Alper to present their work samples and hopefully save the project.

[10][11] In 2023, Stéphane Picq announced a remaster and re-release of the game's original soundtrack, in digital lossless .FLAC format, to be titled Dune Spice Opera 2024.

[15] In April 1994 the magazine said of the CD version that "many of the actors come off better on the PC screen than they fared in the real cinema, and the addition of digitized speech spices up many of the dull parts of the game".

[17] Electronic Gaming Monthly gave the Sega CD version an 8 out of 10, describing it as "involving", and praising the digitized graphics and flight sequences.