Fans of Pokemon who are impatiently waiting for The Isle of Armor and The Crown Tundra Wild Areas to be introduced with Sword and Shield's Expansion Pass might be able to find a reprieve with CremaGames' MMO Temtem, a title proclaiming it will be the "next evolution of creature collecting games." After being put through a final stress test on Saturday, Temtem will release on Steam Early Access January 21 at 10:00 a.m. PST.
For the uninitiated, Temtem is essentially the answer to the question "what if Pokemon were a Massively-Multiplayer Online experience?" It features the same general gameplay loop of capturing (or "taming") a variety of monsters, and either training or breeding them to take on significant characters and an evil organization across a land called the Airborne Archipelago.
The game is not just a carbon copy of its popular inspiration, however. Some major differences that were presented in a trailer last December include Temtem focusing on double battles with more synergistic attacks, adding in a stamina system to prevent players from falling into monotonous commands, and all the trappings that come from it being an online multiplayer game (constant updates, a wide array of outfits, etc.).
CremaGames put out a trailer in the style of an anime opening to coincide with the game's impending early access release, which according to its Steam page will include over 20 hours of gameplay to start. This trailer, again, drew comparisons to GameFreak's inescapable media empire.
To say that Pokemon is inescapable in modern-day popular culture is truly an understatement. It is currently the highest-grossing media franchise of all time; above Hello Kitty, Star Wars, and other Nintendo properties like Mario. Its reach continues to expand too, with an ASMR video starring Charmander uploaded to Pokemon's YouTube channel last week.
But that said, Temtem is not the only property trying to nab a piece of that lucrative pie which has been in the news recently. Another Pokemon-inspired RPG, Nexomon: Extinction, was just announced to be coming to the Nintendo Switch. Oddly enough, that game also uses "tamers" to describe its playerbase rather than Pokemon's familiar "trainers."
It's pretty likely that Temtem could be a huge deal, particularly for fans of Pokemon who felt the series' Switch debut was an underwhelming endeavor. Not only is it going to offer a fresh take on a long-running formula, but doing so as an MMO provides CremaGames the opportunity to continually develop its game into something fans will love to come back to.
But for now eager tamers will just have to wait and see how Temtem's early access launch will go tomorrow, as the full game is not expected to release until 2021.
Temtem will come to Steam Early Access on January 21.