Temtem has been recently making rounds among role-playing audiences as a massively multiplayer Pokemon-inspired creature-collection adventure. The inspiration though only comes from a few basic gameplay mechanics. Temtem holds its own by offering all-new creatures, characters, explorable areas, and storylines. The game even offers competitive battles that are more challenging than the Pokemon ones or other games from the same genre.
Speaking with SegmentNext in a recent interview, game director Guillermo Andrades discussed some of the unique online elements that players will be playing around in Temtem. The game, for example, is fully playable in co-op. In addition, Dojo Wars (similar to clans or guilds) will allow player-owned clubs to battle against each other for dominance.
Temtem is scheduled to release for PC on January 21, 2020. Humble Bundle, the thrifty digital storefront is acting as publisher. The game will also be available on Steam though and can be wishlisted here. Those accustomed to couch-gaming will be glad to know that Temtem will have full controller support.
In your FAQ, you guys have mentioned that the scale of Temtem will be much smaller as compared to the traditional MMOs. Tell us about the world of Temtem and its scale.
Yeah. The problem when talking about “MMOs” is that you instantly relate that to huge games with massive companies behind and basically infinite content (things like World of Warcraft). Temtem, while technically being an MMO, doesn’t share that big scope, that’s why we wanted to clarify it on our FAQ.
The idea for Temtem is to create a campaign focused game and build some MMO aspects around it. Things like seamlessly trading with anyone, housing, clan wars and obviously seeing other users around you at all times.
About the Single Player campaign, How many hours (estimated) players can expect to enjoy for a single playthrough.
With the current content in the Early Access a single playthrough is around 20-25 hours without losing much time on sidequests or completing everything available. When the game is fully released the playthrough time will double since we currently have approximately half the content.
About the multiplayer aspect, let’s talk about the unique online elements the game has to offer. Any specific unique social features?
The most talked about features by the community are the co-op and the dojo wars. The game is fully playable in real co-op. This means that partnering with someone will allow you to experience the full game and full storyline with your partner. Everything that can be done in single player, can be done in co-op too.
About the dojo wars. This feature is not currently available but it was part of our Kickstarter stretch goals. There’s six dojos scattered around the world of Temtem and user created clubs can own them by engaging in wars against other clubs weekly.
About game’s progression, how is it going to differ from regular Pokemon games? Or is it going to follow the similar lines?
It mostly follow the typical RPG game progression in where you start as a newbie and increment your power as you explore the world. In Temtem the main character’s motto is not “becoming the very best”, so it’s something more akin to just a recently made Temtem Tamer exploring the world, discovering new stuff and helping others with their problems.
About the Temtem creature diversity, how much of a variation players can expect to have? How many types you are planning to launch the game with?
There’s 12 types in Temtem: Fire, Nature, Water, Electric, Mental, Earth, Wind, Crystal, Digital, Melee, Toxic and Neutral. The game’s world is divided into 6 islands, and each island features mainly Temtem from two types. So, for example, the first island is based around the Water and Wind types, while the second island features mainly Fire and Nature Temtem.
Temtem sounds like an interesting game and coming to almost all the major current gen platforms. What about the next-gen PS5 and Xbox Series X? Would you guys want to bring your game to those platforms as well?
It’s still early to talk about it but we’re definitely interested in supporting every platform we can so PS5 and Series X are totally in our radar for the future.
On the same topic, as a developer, what’s the most exciting thing for you when it comes to PS5 and Xbox Series X. How will they change gaming?
For me it’s the promise of having better (or more stable) FPS numbers. I’m mostly a pc gamer and playing games at 144 Hz just feels so good. When I play with my consoles it’s the one thing I miss the most, especially since most games are just focused on giving more resolution or graphical quality (at the cost of capping FPS to 30). I hope with all the new power we can have the better from both worlds.
You guys have mentioned in the FAQ that there is no issue of copyright claims from Nintendo as it’s a Pokemon inspired game. Are you stating that based on relations or there is any official agreement with the makers of Pokemon games?
We haven’t requested any official agreement because it’s not needed. The game doesn’t use anything from any other games and everything in Temtem is original and made from scratch.
“Inspired by” games have always existed. Even Nintendo has lots of them in their stores, whether it’s inspired by Pokémon or by Super Smash Bros, it doesn’t really matter as long as there’s no IP infringement.
What do you guys have planned for post launch content for Temtem. Will you bring content as regular MMOs do or you have planned something else? Also, is the post-launch content going to be free?
We still have a long road ahead just for finishing the game, so we are currently focused on that and not thinking on what we will do when the game is done.
How much the game is going to cost when it releases in full on all platforms (consoles included)?
We don’t have an official price point for the release yet.
Last but not the least, in-game purchases and microtransactions; What sort of microtransactions Temtem will feature? Cosmetics only?
Same as with the post-game content, we don’t have the fully fledged plans for microtransactions yet. The only thing we know for sure is that in-game purchases won’t be pay-to-win or pay-to-skip oriented so yeah, cosmetics will be one of the big areas for microtransactions.
