Dune Legacy
An open-source remake of Dune II
An open-source remake of Dune II
Arrakis is not just a battlefield. It is a city you have to keep alive.
Dune City is a city-builder fused with Dune II. It keeps the sand, spice, vehicles, houses, and survival pressure of the original, then adds zoning, power grids, roads, budgets, civic services, and colony growth. Less "capture the base", more "make the desert pay rent".
Latest: 1.0.359 | Windows · macOS · Linux
DuneCity turns the Dune Legacy engine into a colony simulation. You are still on Arrakis, still under pressure, still living by the spice. But now the fight is bigger than units: it is land use, infrastructure, power, traffic, economy, and whether your settlement can survive long enough to matter.
Build generation and distribution into the city plan. A dead grid means a dead settlement.
Residential, commercial, and industrial districts push the RTS map toward a living civic system.
Roads and traffic matter. The city is only as useful as the routes that keep it moving.
Budgets, services, growth, and spice-backed survival turn every expansion into a tradeoff.
Fresh work-in-progress shots from the city simulation branch.
Settlement planning starts to bite into the desert
Build controls and infrastructure systems coming online
Zoning turns empty sand into a working colony plan
Power and districts make expansion a real decision
The colony pushes outward into hostile terrain
New build tools make the mode feel like its own game
More systems, more pressure, more city to keep alive
Early colony planning — residential zones, roads, and desert expansion
Frontier warfare — turrets, tanks, and ornithopters defend the growing city
Late-game megacity — 2M+ population, power grids, and combat events
Released from GitHub Releases. The in-game updater will flag new versions automatically.
macOS 14.0+ (Apple Silicon)
Download DMGmacOS blocks it on first launch — see how to Open Anyway.
Dune City layers a Micropolis-style city simulation on top of Dune II. Build a Construction Yard, lay out roads, drop R/C/I zone tiles, and keep the lights on. The simulation does the rest.
On first launch Dune City offers a one-click Enable now prompt for the bundled city-sim mod. If you skip it, you can flip it on later under Options → Mods → Dune City.
Pick Single Player → Custom Game and load the bundled map "2P - 192x192 - SimCity" (or any larger map with big rock areas). The city tools only work on rock.
The build menu also exposes three new tiles when city-sim mode is on:
Drop zones as 2×2 tiles. Each starts empty and develops over time based on land value, power, supply, and crime.
Population pays taxes annually. Police stations cost upkeep. Open the city budget window (HUD button) to set tax rate and police funding. Underfunded police means rising crime, which crashes land value and stalls growth.
Combat still applies. Dune City is layered on top of Dune Legacy, so units, vehicles, ornithopters, sandworms and combat all still work. You can play a pure city-builder skirmish on a big rock map, or a hybrid where you defend the colony while it grows.
The macOS build is ad-hoc signed (no paid Apple Developer ID yet), so on first launch macOS Gatekeeper blocks it. The app is not damaged or unsafe — you just need to approve it once. Depending on your macOS version you'll see either "dunecity.app was blocked to protect your Mac" or "dunecity.app is damaged and can't be opened".
macOS 15 Sequoia / macOS 26 and later — use "Open Anyway":
dunecity.app. macOS blocks it with "dunecity.app was blocked to protect your Mac." — click Done.You only need to do this once per version. (On macOS 14 and earlier you can instead right-click dunecity.app → Open, then click Open Anyway in the dialog.)
Prefer Terminal? Strip the quarantine flag in one line, then open normally:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/dunecity.appLinux and Windows builds don't have this issue — they run as downloaded.
Dune City is now publicly released (1.0.359 is current). Active development continues — bug reports, balance feedback, and city screenshots are all very welcome.