Temtems - A Failed Attempt At A Pokeclone

[Nauseated Courgi]

I'm going to save some people the trouble and make a general thread for Temtem.

For those who are unaware, Temtem is the latest pokemon rip-off that was made (at least partly) to ride off of the pokemon hate train. It's currently available for purchase on Steam, and as of right now, It's coming off to a very rocky start.

If there's anything that you would like to discuss about it. Be the game itself, the discord server's activity or so on, feel free to do it here.

For more Info on the game itself, See the post @Disc made below this one.

 

[Disc]

Temtem is a new MMORPG focused on creature collecting. It was released into Early Access as of a little over a day ago, which means that, for the first time, it isn't being played by people directly invested in the game.

So, what is Temtem?

It's a pretty obvious Pokemon clone. Even as they shill for it, the journalists and many of the other supporters can't resist naming the game it's supposed to shame. The fanbase is riddled with people who make it beyond clear that they're buying Temtems because it's a lot like Pokemon and they want to be mad at Pokemon right now. If you'd believe them, it's going to burst out of nowhere, blast pokemon right out of the park, and take home the gold. I'm not sure if Crema actually wants that comparison made, as a close examination makes it pretty clear that Temtems is certainly the closest to a Pokemon game there's been in a while. To the point that they're probably afraid of receiving a very sternly worded letter from TPC.

Temtem is poised around the idea of 'the pokemon game that fans truly want', which is... not necessarily a good idea. Granted, if there's a time to strike on that, it's probably now, but people forget that means that a lot of it's thought processes are based on issues that veteran Pokemon fans have, not what's best for newbies to a franchise.

A great example of this is the starter pokemon. Pokemon has always done it's starters as a trio of Fire, Water, and Grass type, but people have been clamouring for an alternate type matchup set for starters. Now, they have it - with the types being Crystal, Mental(Psychic), and Melee(Fighting). The problem is, they've sacrificed the very easy to understand fire/water/grass relationship, and now have a big question why 'mental' Temtem are weak to crystals. Don't crystals have a big focus in both some scientific endeavours and mysticism? I can think of more 'mental' relevant things that use crystals than are weak to them, unless we're talking crystal meth. It's explicitly meant to be slower and grindier than Pokemon, and skips a lot of those 'lazy shortcuts' (read: Quality of Life features) that Pokemon has built up.

Spoiler: Examples of Temtem/Pokemon similarities (and other notes)

• Temtems have six of their stats named exactly the same as the six Pokemon stats. and work in an identical way. The exception is a stamina stat, which is a new mechanic.
• Temtems may be single or dual typed, and possess one of two 'traits' (abilities)
• Temtems have values influencing their stats representing their training known as Training Values or TVs (this is identical to Pokemon's Effort Values/EVs, except Temtem's stats are explicit - and made to nearly double the range, thus making it grindier.)
• Temtems have values influencing their stats representing genetic diversity within the species in terms of capability, called Single Values/SVs (pokemon has the same in Individual Values/IVs, with pretty much the same differences as above.)
• Teams consist of 6 TemTem.
• All Temtem tamers seek to beat a series of Dojos (Gyms) with the goal of getting into a big tournament (Pokemon League)
• There are extremely rare variants, with a base chance in the thousands, to get a Temtem with a different colouring called a Luma Temtem (Shiny Pokemon)

TemTems has around 80 of the buggers available right now, across 12 types. These types will be scattered across six islands, roughly in pairs. With only three islands available at time of writing, this means several types have a skeleton crew at best. One of the most interesting, discussed in game, and original types - Digital - has literally no representation outside of your rival owning one.

That's a basic rundown.

Some posts in other threads that might be important:
Original Notice
Platypet the Fakemon
Discussion on TemTem Design

 

[Bioniclelover]

Finally a game for kids where you can choose your pronouns and have interaction with NPCs about said pronouns

 

[Love_Machine011]

Temtems all look stupid and gay. Pokemon 4 lyfe.

 

[RA-5C Vigilante]

Temtem is a new MMORPG focused on creature collecting. It was released as of a little over a day ago, which means that, for the first time, it isn't being played by people directly invested in the game.

So, what is Temtem?

It's a pretty obvious Pokemon clone. Even as they shill for it, the journalists and many of the other supporters can't resist naming the game it's supposed to shame. The fanbase is riddled with people who make it beyond clear that they're buying Temtems because it's a lot like Pokemon and they want to be mad at Pokemon right now. If you'd believe them, it's going to burst out of nowhere, blast pokemon right out of the park, and take home the gold. I'm not sure if Crema actually wants that comparison made, as a close examination makes it pretty clear that Temtems is certainly the closest to a Pokemon game there's been in a while. To the point that they're probably afraid of receiving a very sternly worded letter from TPC.

Temtem is poised around the idea of 'the pokemon game that fans truly want', which is... not necessarily a good idea. Granted, if there's a time to strike on that, it's probably now, but people forget that means that a lot of it's thought processes are based on issues that veteran Pokemon fans have, not what's best for newbies to a franchise.

A great example of this is the starter pokemon. Pokemon has always done it's starters as a trio of Fire, Water, and Grass type, but people have been clamouring for an alternate type matchup set for starters. Now, they have it - with the types being Crystal, Mental(Psychic), and Melee(Fighting). The problem is, they've sacrificed the very easy to understand fire/water/grass relationship, and now have a big question why 'mental' Temtem are weak to crystals. Don't crystals have a big focus in both some scientific endeavours and mysticism? I can think of more 'mental' relevant things that use crystals than are weak to them, unless we're talking crystal meth. It's explicitly meant to be slower and grindier than Pokemon, and skips a lot of those 'lazy shortcuts' (read: Quality of Life features) that Pokemon has built up.

Spoiler: Examples of Temtem/Pokemon similarities (and other notes)

• Temtems have six of their stats named exactly the same as the six Pokemon stats. and work in an identical way. The exception is a stamina stat, which is a new mechanic.
• Temtems may be single or dual typed, and possess one of two 'traits' (abilities)
• Temtems have values influencing their stats representing their training known as Training Values or TVs (this is identical to Pokemon's Effort Values/EVs, except Temtem's stats are explicit - and made to nearly double the range, thus making it grindier.)
• Temtems have values influencing their stats representing genetic diversity within the species in terms of capability, called Single Values/SVs (pokemon has the same in Individual Values/IVs, with pretty much the same differences as above.)
• Teams consist of 6 TemTem.
• All Temtem tamers seek to beat a series of Dojos (Gyms) with the goal of getting into a big tournament (Pokemon League)
• There are extremely rare variants, with a base chance in the thousands, to get a Temtem with a different colouring called a Luma Temtem (Shiny Pokemon)

TemTems has around 80 of the buggers available right now, across 12 types. These types will be scattered across six islands, roughly in pairs. With only three islands available at time of writing, this means several types have a skeleton crew at best. One of the most interesting, discussed in game, and original types - Digital - has literally no representation outside of your rival owning one.

That's a basic rundown.

Some posts in other threads that might be important:
Original Notice
Platypet the Fakemon
Discussion on TemTem Design

Oh its gonna kill Pokemon?

Just like Digi-oh

Just like Yokai-oh

I eagerly await to hear people four months from now scroll through their Steam library and spend two minutes trying to remember what the ever loving fuck Temtems was.

 

[OddEyes]

@Disc
May wanna consider throwing in those screenshots from their discord server.

 

[Love_Machine011]

I think this is gonna be a record for the site on how fast a thread dies. Unless this turns into a fallout 76

 

[TendieGremlin]

Oh its gonna kill Pokemon?

Just like Digi-oh

Just like Yokai-oh

I eagerly await to hear people four months from now scroll through their Steam library and spend two minutes trying to remember what the ever loving fuck Temtems was.

I highly doubt it will kill Pokemon or anything but I think it's good enough to leave a mark of some sort.

 

[Nauseated Courgi]

I think this is gonna be a record for the site on how fast a thread dies. Unless this turns into a fallout 76

I'll just wait and see what happens really.

 

[Chin of Campbell]

There are plenty of actually good Pokémon games and plenty of different monster-raising/training games to fall back on before needing to fall back on something like this. They put out so many Pokémon games anyway that there will surely be a halfway decent one again before too many years pass. I just don't see the point.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I kinda hope it becomes popular to get an exceptional rivalry between Pokemon and Temtem, but I doubt it will really take off. Pokemon will always have the popularity of brand recognision and it won't seem to weaken despite of how better its rivals are.

 

[Disc]

The TemTem Fanbase
If you've been paying even the slightest amount of attention, you'd probably know that Pokemon is on a lot of people's naughty lists right now. Sword and Shield were flawed games at best, being the first main series games to not include all previous Pokemon.

That's created a fertile ground for Temtem to have a community effectively asking for it to appear. Unfortunately, it means the community is already infested with the most toxic, angry parts of the pokemon community.

The best example of this is the early access fiasco. Up until the moment early access dropped, this game was being hailed as the second coming of christ. It's going to be the pokemon killer (or at least cause Pokemon to take notice and fix itself), it's going to be the best thing ever, just u wait ninteno we comin fr u!

Then early access dropped, and proved to be an absolute shitshow. We're talking constant queueing and DCs, Black screens of death, floating heads for players, item boxes that froze the game... They had two stress tests (which, if you read between the lines, didn't go well.) only a few days before release, which meant that even though it seemed to have significant issues, there was no time for anything more than tinkering and hotfixes. There was time to massively increase cosmetic prices, though.

At the same time, the game was being hyped up CRAZY HARD by media. A lot of reviewers had clearly been given early-access copies, which came when the servers were only occupied by a couple of hundred - couple of thousand kickstarter players. When early access was released, everyone tried to get on at once, which lead to two camps rapidly forming in temtem places:

1: I've literally been trying for two hours to get into this game, I want a refund, I'll buy it when it works.
2:

The determined stans immediately began shitting on the people who wanted refunds, even though paying $35 for a game you literally can't play is totally a refund-worthy situation. Full games don't cost that much, and the general understanding of early access is that it's a minimum viable product - mostly functional with kinks - not near-unplayable (which TemTem often is during prime time).

Add on that the temtem discord contains tens of thousands of wannabe players, with only two chats devoted to the game, and you have a disaster waiting to happen.

And it's made EVEN WORSE because the game itself doesn't have a chat function right now. So all the toxicity is in one long thread. The game is basically an MMO in name only right now, with no features that couldn't be handled by a tiny dedicated server that players only access occasionally. For the game itself, that's honestly a feature with how bad this fanbase is.

It's also got a blizzard of snowflakes in the community, who are also highly incentivised to stan for it no matter what. But while they're stanning for it now, this whole fanbase is a powderkeg ready to blow, in my opinion. These groups are all either highly reactive, have already ragequit one series, or both. If the devs make a greedy or bad play, things could get real ugly, real fast.

 

[Marissa Moira]

Oh its gonna kill Pokemon?

Just like Digi-oh

Just like Yokai-oh

I eagerly await to hear people four months from now scroll through their Steam library and spend two minutes trying to remember what the ever loving fuck Temtems was.

Digimon is still going and the new anime is now a reboot of Seasons 1 and 2 and a Tamers reboot is supposedly following.

 

[Disc]

Digimon is still going and the new anime is now a reboot of Seasons 1 and 2 and a Tamers reboot is supposedly following.

Oh, there's a reboot now? Nice.

The thing is, they've both tried and failed to oust Pokemon, and have since all-but fallen off the radar in the west. Expecting Pokemon to be toppled by a tiny game without the multimedia support that others have failed with is lunacy.

 

[Tour of Italy]

It doesn’t look too bad to be honest. I’ll grab it on sale if I still remember it exists after release time.

I like the more unified art direction for the monsters. I like Pokemon but each generation saw the design philosophy evolve inconsistently. The series is a multi-decade pastiche of designs that are a product of their respective eras and it’s been showing its age for a while.

 

[Love_Machine011]

It doesn’t look too bad to be honest. I’ll grab it on sale if I still remember it exists after release time.

I like the more unified art direction for the monsters. I like Pokemon but each generation saw the design philosophy evolve inconsistently. The series is a multi-decade pastiche of designs that are a product of their respective eras and it’s been showing its age for a while.

>Monsters
>Unified art direction
Are we looking at the same monsters? The designs are spastic at best.

 

[Tour of Italy]

>Monsters
>Unified art direction
Are we looking at the same monsters? The designs are spastic at best.

Welp I’ll be honest I haven’t looked at the game since an early alpha in 2018. I just browsed the wiki and I take it all back. There are some really fun, unique ones that stick with you but yes it’s way more scattered than I remember.

 

[Disc]

Welp I’ll be honest I haven’t looked at the game since an early alpha in 2018. I just browsed the wiki and I take it all back. There are some really fun, unique ones that stick with you but yes it’s way more scattered than I remember.

It says a lot that a lot of people's favourite TemTem is the platypus fakemon.

I've actually bought the game in early access, mainly so I could confirm or deny to people how good it was.

TEMTEM GAMEPLAY - STREAMLINED, BUT STRETCHED

The game has most of its moment-to-moment interactions go faster... and yet it feels like a slower and grindier game. Healing? Faster. Catching? Faster. Starting Wild Battles? Faster. Moving? Always running.

Going anywhere? Slow as all hell. With every battle made to at least do some damage, your temtem will take a lot of damage that builds up. Balms (potions) are very expensive too - a single 25 hp heal costs five times what a TemCard (Pokeball) costs. I'm progressing without having to grind yet, but that's mainly because I'm deliberately using a small team. (only grabbed my fourth temtem after the third town, and you start with two).

Routes wind back and forth, with lots of battle which are nearly all mandatory. There's no avoiding a battle - if you want to get past someone you always have to fight, and you nearly always have to walk through the grass. I've seen no npcs that both move and are fightable, either. The first route in particular doubles back on itself a lot, with a lot of small ledges to hop over. Combine that with very twitchy movement and no speed control, and it's very easy to set yourself back.

They give you an item called a Temessence vial. This item does everything a healing station does, healing your whole team, but only does it once per trip. It says a lot that smoke bombs (basically super-Escape ropes that take you back to where you can heal) are a much, MUCH smarter investment than balms.

This all stacks to mean that getting between any two towns feels longer than most Pokemon trips. Remember going from Fortree to Lilycove? especially the fence maze in the latter half? Yeah, imagine every route being that.

Trainers from the bottom of the screen can see you long before you see them. So that's a fun little addition, especially when you're two steps from town but you just wanted to check out this cool area. If two temtem tamers are meant to be fought together, you have to fight them together every time. No ifs, no buts, no 'positioning yourself and taking them out one by one'. Every fight is a mandatory two-person fight.

Every Tamer battle is preceded by several lines of dialog. Including dialog choices. This helps characterize the NPC tamers you meet - which is somewhat good, because they otherwise all just look like random players. To the point it's very easy to get them confused. It does, however, slow down the game even more if you're talking to them beyond just mashing A.

The music is generally... weaker? It might have to do with sound balancing, but the music for TemTems is just not as catchy. It sounds nice, and it's mostly violin based, but it doesn't really try to experiment or go places, and it doesn't have as strong beats as a Pokemon theme does. I've only heard the wild and trainer battle themes, so maybe the others are better, but those two will make up 90% of the gameplay, so...

Despite this, the underlying game feels solid. The battles are fun so far, the synergy moves are easy but satisfying to pull off... but I feel like I'm going nowhere. It doesn't help that trainer levels are all over the place - one minute you're fighting a small group of weak level 6 and 7 temtems, and the next you're fighting two (underlevelled) evolved temtems with powerful synergy moves. Add on weak monster variety and it feels like an intense skinner box.

I'll give more details in another post. Gotta talk about tem variety, the story, and why even if your rival's an asshole, the Professor is actually way worse without anyone realising it.

 

[Namesarehardtocomeupwith]

Oh, there's a reboot now? Nice.

The thing is, they've both tried and failed to oust Pokemon, and have since all-but fallen off the radar in the west.

I agree with your first half and disagree with the second half. Ever since digimon stop imitate pokemon and trying for their own niche their game has been popular and generally well received in the west. The upcoming digimon survive seem to be making waves too since they'll be aiming for the pc market as well follow the success of the digimon story port.

 

[Cedric_Eff]

One of the monster designs of this game is an fan made Pokémon that they added after asking the original fan artists. What’s up with fan artists and fans these days. This is some Sonic Mania shit man.