Temtem News

CU1, which stands for Content Update 1, is the major update in the Arbury Island cycle. It's packed with features, each one of them bigger than the next, with some of them being highly anticipated. Although we will, as usual, provide in-depth explanations when the update launches, here's a reminder of some of the exciting stuff coming your way with CU1, in case you'd missed it:



[h2]Trade House[/h2]

If you've tried to enter every house in Temtem, you must've noticed some buildings described as Trade Houses or similar. These places are currently marked with a WIP sign, and are inaccessible, but this will change when CU1 hits.

The Trading Houses are the market-oriented locations in the game, where players will be able to post and receive offers without the need to directly interact with anyone.
They will act as a bulletin board where everyone will be able to post their offers and requests and others will be able to sort through all these listings. All trade houses are equal and provide access to the same trading network, meaning you can simply drop by the one that's closer to you, or the one you find the most ~aesthetic~.




[h2]Dojo Wars[/h2]

Each island in the Archipelago will hold a Club Dojo (so, six in total), which players will be able to conquer and hold. Clubs will be able to challenge the current Dojo leaders each week by participating in in-game tournaments and facing the rest of participating Clubs. These matches will take place in different time windows during the week, with it being on different days depending on the Dojo you're aiming to capture. This means there will be some Dojos that are super convenient for you, and others that are less so.

You'll need a minimum of 11 players to take part in Dojo Wars, and you can designate your participants with the future Dojo Warrior role. Once a Club has conquered a Dojo, they will be able to decorate it and obtain Pansuns for their Club during the time they hold it. And that's not all! Dojos conquered by clubs will also house the mysterious Dojo Park, of which we shall tell you more when the time is right.




[h2]Mounts[/h2]

Mounts are a staple feature in any MMO and we didn't want to miss out on it! Although Matter Transfer Drones are very convenient and cover most of the Archipelago, Mounts will give you the possibility of taking in the scenery with the added bonus of speed and preventing untamed Temtem encounters. We're only adding a couple of mounts for now, and will include others in the future.





As usual, we're not spoiling all our surprises just yet. There is a couple more features, QoL changes, balance and bug fixes, even some new Gears! Stay tuned to our socials and news channels for the date (once we have it), and have fun in the meantime.
Temtem up!

Hello Tamers! Are you keeping warm (or cool) and drinking enough water? We hope you are!

We're here to make the winter holidays at least 20% better with Arbury, the awaited last island in the Archipelago, which just also happens to be amazing. Let's dive in to see everything this island contains!


[h2]Arbury, an island divided[/h2]

This patch is the first patch in the Arbury cycle, and will, of course, add the island of Arbury to the Archipelago.

Arbury is divided in two main cities, Lochburg and Properton, each of which has a very different mentality and way of life. Naturally, conflict and a decades-long rivalry have ensued, but it's all in good fun, right? Right?. While Lochburg believes in facing everything head-on and letting their fists do the talking, Properton is more of a mind-focused city state, and would rather engage in a battle of wits. It's a given that with such stark differences, their taste in Temtem would differ, too: Lochburg is rich in Melee-type Tems, and Properton excels in Mental-type Tems. You'll also discover that some other, different Tems seem to have infiltrated the island somehow. With a total of 31 new entries, you'll finally be able to fill all but one slot in your Tempedia, and of course, new Tems mean new Traits, new Gears and new Techniques!

And even though they're all part of the same island, this rivalry has led them to institute two different Dojos! Who will you battle first, the adventurous Murdag or the sly Percival?



[h2]The end of a journey[/h2]

I know it sounds dramatic, but that's because I am dramatic. In all seriousness, this is just my way of bringing up that Arbury marks the end of the main story line. Do you remember your Apprentice's Eve, and the person you were when it all started? Think of all the characters you've met, all the quests you've been sent off on, all the fights you've won and lost. Think of all the Temtem that have accompanied you in this adventure. Now think of finally facing the end of that story, of finally defeating (or not) Clan Belsoto's top brass once and for all and saving the Archipelago. See why I was dramatic?

Now, this is not the end of Temtem at all. Arbury is the sixth and last island of the Archipelago, but if you've been here for a while, you probably know there's a lot we still have to do, from features like Mounts or Dojo Wars, to platforms that are waiting for us, all through a whole array of endgame activities, bug fixes and improvements. This is still a game in development!

It's worth noting that, since Arbury is the last planned island, this is also, by extension, likely the last batch of new Tems in the game (except for one very special last Tem, the third Mythical, that will be added later in the future). We get a lot of questions about what's coming to the world of Temtem now that we're reaching a certain point, and we also get a lot of requests for more islands/Tems (which we know come from a place of love), but from the very beginning the Archipelago was comprised of six islands, and the Tempedia was a 165-tem roster. With this, we've completed the picture we had for the game in terms of islands and Tems. If in the end some new tem comes along, that'll be a pleasant surprise to everybody, but we'd rather focus on the facts. There's always been more to Temtem than Tems and islands, so there's still a lot coming!



Needless to say, you don't need to worry about Temtem shutting down: we have plans for continued support for it, including past 1.0 launch. Apart from the basic content that is currently missing, there's still so, so much we want to deliver in terms of features and gameplay loops that (we believe) will give Temtem a long-lasting life, and don't forget there's still a whole new end-game area to discover!

So please don't be concerned when the credits roll in, this is not the end! It's just the final brooch to a story we embarked on years ago, and you'll be promptly returned to the Archipelago as soon as they finish, so you can keep enjoying the world of Temtem.

[h2]Kudos[/h2]

Kudos? Kudos! Kudos are Temtem's take on achievements and are coming to you with the first update in the Arbury patch cycle.

We've tried to cover most areas of the game with them, so if you're the collector type, you have a handful of goals ahead! Kudos are listed in different categories according to their nature to make them easier to manage, and you'll be able to quickly see your current progress, so you can easily keep track of where you're at and be proud when you complete one. Here's a sneak peek of the categories:



Not all Kudos are retroactive, meaning you might have to embark on certain activities again, but we have made sure that Kudos that are gated behind unrepeatable content will be retroactive. This means all of them are achievable by playing normally. We've also made it so Kudos can grant rewards, but we'll implement said rewards in the future! These will range from exclusive cosmetics, to Titles, furniture and emotes. If you achieve the Kudo now, you'll be able to claim the reward later, so no need to hold back.

And to the question you're probably thinking right now, yessss, Steam and PS5 achievements are coming with this update too! Not all Kudos are tied to an external achievement, but all external achievements are connected to a Kudo, and you'll unlock the matching Steam achievement/PS5 trophy when you achieve one of those tied Kudos in Temtem. The best part is that this isn't even the full list of Kudos! We'll be adding more as we progress on development and unveil new features.

Kudos to you!

[h2]Performance improvements[/h2]

We've been working extra hard on an entire new system that will hopefully make Temtem load faster and ease up on memory occupation. I have an explanation for it, but I am -not- a tech person, so bear with me:

This system is, in fact, not entirely new. We had already started implementing it for VFX and Temtem, and thus reduced the number of crashes caused by running out of memory. Because we had been focused on launching patches and adding features non-stop, we hadn't really had much time to really focus on memory optimization or performance improvements, though. Now, however, as the game got bigger and as we started working on ports to different platforms, we needed to start extending this new system to the whole game.

In the past, Temtem allowed the engine shoulder the responsibility of loading everything when you walked into a new area, combat or building. This new system will make sure we only load what's needed, and little by little, thus increasing the memory performance. In consequence, your game will load faster while burdening your machine less. It will not increase your FPS or anything of the sort, but will shorten loading times and give those old computers a lil' break.

But everything in life comes with a price: this new system could (and most likely will) cause some new and previously unseen bugs, so we're asking for your patience and understanding, and hoping you'll help us reporting them when the time comes. Thanks for your patience beforehand!



[h2]And more![/h2]

You know these few highlights are never the full rundown, and as usual, you can check out the whole list of changes and novelties in the full patch notes here.

For this update we've continued progressing on feedback given on many different areas: we've added items that will make gaining EXP easier, and we've equated the experience earned from wild Tems to that of NPC battles. Leveling up is not in the best place right now, but this should help alleviate the current issues.

There are also a lot of balance changes meant to address the final level cap, and when we say a lot we mean it. We've added novelty items, many of which were community suggested, that will make TV-training more efficient, and we've reset TMR and TMR Peak to give the meta a fresh start now that we have a full roster.

[h2]What's next?[/h2]

We'd also like to touch on a lot more that is coming during this patch cycle! For the next content update, which is expected in the next handful of months, we plan on releasing features as huge as Mounts, the Trading House, and Dojo Wars. We'll be talking more about them as we approach to it!

There's another really expected feature that we've been working on: the cross-progression system! We've been doing some background work and refactoring to support it, and we're immersed in talks with platform holders to have it enabled. We'd like to have it implemented ASAP, and as soon as we get greenlit we'll share more details on how it'll work.

We haven't talked about it in a while (it was only mentioned in ye olde roadmap), but we've also been setting up a public API for Temtem, for all your community tools! With a bit of technical knowledge, the API will make it so much easier to access data that used to be only available in-game, and probably cover many community needs. We're currently testing it internally, in a private beta phase with some community members, and we can't wait to share it with everyone when it's ready!

And, of course, we're working on the Switch and Xbox Series X&S ports. We're now facing the challenges each platform poses with the game, and working on overcoming them. We still have a while ahead and we'd like to talk more about this in the future, once we're done with the Arbury cycle, but we wanted you to rest assured that we're working on it.

We're really looking forward to your reactions upon finally seeing Arbury, your feelings towards the new tems, techniques, traits and gears, and of course, your opinion on the myriad of QoL changes, balance changes and more that every content patch brings with it! Remember that we process your feedback and suggestions through here, and that we are usually hanging around our Discord server, where we talk about stuff and sometimes leak unseen things! Come join us for a cuppa ☕

We hope you really enjoy Arbury. Temtem up!

Hello there, Tamers! The second content update of the Cipanku cycle is here to put a bow on the weeb era, so here’s a more detailed look at some of the new features and content added in this update! Be aware that it will contain spoilers about the patch, so read at your own discretion.

While this update, lovingly called CU2, doesn’t uncover any new Temtem or island, it does add some spicy content to the roster: you’ll get to unlock a new building in Cipanku, experience new Quests and gears, a lot of QoL changes and features such as Tournaments and playable musical instruments.
Let’s dig in!

[h2]Welcome to our offices![/h2]
You’ll be able to walk into Crema Corp in this update, and meet some of us working there. In fact you will help out in various stages of game development, starting from the simplest of tasks and going all the way up to the CEO. But don’t worry, you’ll be compensated for your work in the shape of gears (everyone knows game devs don’t actually get paid, duh).
We’ve carefully recreated the actual Crema offices, and the same goes for our characters, who’ve been hand-made to resemble each one of us. Please take lots of selfies and show us! As you can imagine, this bit is really emotional for the team and we hope you’ll enjoy this opportunity and get to know us better.



[h2]Tournaments: time to prove your competitive worth
[/h2]
You read that right!
We’re deploying in-game Tournaments now, and they’re quite important so take a seat.
Tournaments will be a weekly occurrence, initially on Sundays. There will be three tournaments each Sunday, spread across different time zones so our Tamers can choose the one that suits them best (or, you know, enlist in all three, who are we to tell you how to live your life). Each tournament will have infinite brackets of 32 players each. These brackets get created as people join in and can be infinite. Brackets will factor in the TMR of the Tamers inscribed, and will designate leagues based on the average TMR in the bracket. There are currently four leagues, and rewards get better as the league gets higher.
Joining a Tournament is completely free of charge, too! All Tamers who win at least one match will get a Pansun reward, more or less juicy depending on their performance. But this is about winning. We’ve tried to make the winning prizes appealing and worthy, so the winner of each tournament will get an exclusive in-game title that is unique to each month, and a winner medal that can be displayed on the Tamer Info.
We’ll be holding our first in-game tournament tomorrow, Wednesday July 7th at 12 am PST / 7 am UTC. The whole Crema team will be watching, so consider it a grand event! We’ll also hold the 3 usual Tournaments on Sunday, but this one’s special. We encourage everyone to give it a try, and wish you all the best of luck!🏅

[h2]Competitive improvements
[/h2]
To match the sparkly new Tournaments, we’ve also made some improvements to competitive playing. To begin with we’ve tweaked some timers, and we’ve changed the way Gears were placed in PvP squads: from now on, you’ll place the Gears in slots instead of on Temtem. This allows you to have different Gears on the same tem depending on what Competitive Squad you’re using. This was a long-time request from the competitive community, and it involved changing a lot of the original system of competitive squads, gears, etc.
Apart from competitive in itself, we’ve added a couple things to Spectating to really breathe some life into it: your spectators will actually be in the very Battlezone with you, and you will see and hear their emotes in real time (you can disable the emoting if it gets too distracting). We believe this will make tournaments more exciting and give it an actual sense of unicity and eventfulness. Also, the Spectate button now changes in real time so you never miss your favorite people’s matches.
We’re very eager to see how these changes impact the competitive and tournament scene, and as usual, we hope you’ll like them and will be watching out for your reactions!



[h2]Get ready to rrrrumble![/h2]
Are you feeling it, Mr. Krabs? We’ve put a lot of care and attention into vibration and Haptic feedback so our players can feel Temtem on a different level. Haptic feedback was uncharted territory for us, and it gave us a lot of room to play around, and we’ve tried our best to include it seamlessly so PS5 players will feel right at home in Temtem. I promise you will feel Techniques on a new level now. Of course, we’ve added vibration to a whole lot of features, so you should experience it for yourselves. And, because we know rumbling and vibrating can be overwhelming at times, both Haptic and vibrations can be turned off from Settings.
Also, while we’re on the topic of control, we’ve made Temtem entirely playable with a mouse! We understand Temtem sessions can get long, we understand some people work better with a mouse or have conditions preventing them from using a controller or a keyboard for a long time, and we understand some MMOs feel better with a mouse. All in all, we believed that giving our players this choice was well worth the resources and will provide everyone some quality of life and comfort.

[h2]Let’s get musical 🎶[/h2]
We’ve added a functioning musical instrument as a reward for a very musical quest. It even has scales and a very focused piano face. While this might come off as surprising, one of our focuses in Temtem is, and has always been, social elements, and we highly value what they add to the game, even if it’s not traditional gameplay per se. It’s finally time to talk to Damián and finish the Musical Crystals quest!
We’re jumping into the club of games who have playable musical instruments, and as such, and for the arts, we believe this requires an exception in one of our usual policies. This is why, using macros to play the Toy Piano, and only that, will be allowed. Please don’t attempt to use macros for anything outside of the Toy Piano, as it’s a bannable offense. Of course, we’re super eager to listen to your creations, covers and reinterpretations, so please make sure to post them where we can see them!



[h2]Smoother running[/h2]
Temtem will run smoother and perform better on most machines from this update onwards! For those interested, here’s why:
Up until now, the game would load mostly anything it could use at some point, regardless of whether Tamers were going to see it or not. One of our long-planned, pending tasks (scheduled for version 1.0, in fact), was to redo this so only the essential would initially load, and everything else would only load when needed, dynamically.
We wanted to wait until 1.0 to tackle this because it’s infinitely easier to design and implement when the game is already “finished” and everything is laid out, instead of adding and retouching it with each update. To top this off, Unity has historically had a lot of issues with systems like these, so we wanted to wait as much as we could to ensure our engine version would be well prepared for the change.
But this was the cause for both the long initial loading time and some of the black screens that happened when changing scenes (including the Co-op ones!). Due to how much Temtem has changed and grown from our initial standpoint, this situation has escalated to a point where we simply couldn’t wait until 1.0 to introduce these changes, so we’ve gotten down to it. We started internally implementing this change in recent patches, and we tested it out with Technique animations even as far back as PS5 launch. With this patch today we’ve applied this change to many more areas in the game, so it should be fairly noticeable and we’ll continue adding improvements and bettering performance in future patches.
Tl;dr: Temtem go brrrr.


Of course, this isn’t everything! Read the full patch notes here to check out the full list of bugs we’ve fixed, the (few) balance changes, and all the other stuff in this patch, like the split of Telomere Hacks or the changes to PvP timers.

We hope you enjoy this patch, and see you soon!

Hello Tamers!

We’re here today, as is our custom, to share some insight about the process behind the latest Breeder (remember: the Backer tier, not Mimit) additions to the world of Temtem!

For those unfamiliar with the term, Breeder Backers are Kickstarter Backers whose unique perk was to design a Temtem line, and a route. Follow the links to read more about previous Breeder tems and routes!
The Cipanku update gave us the popular Pupoise and Loatle, while patch 0.7.2 granted us access to the beautiful Gardens of Aztlan.

Let’s start with the tems!


[h2]Pupoise & Loatle[/h2]
These Digital wonders were recently added with the Cipanku update, and always make an appearance when asking the community about their favorites. They were first brought to the table by our Breeder Tutorxic, who approached the design team with the idea of a two-stage Temtem based on turtles, with a voodoo doll theme.



There was a lot of initial debate about the typing for these two: the final stage had to be a Mental Tem because of the voodoo theme, the floating and the psychokinesis. We weren’t sure, however, about the typing for the initial stage, because it didn’t fit the Mental type, and also because there was a drastic change between both forms. We learned that one of Tutorxic’s favorite types was Digital and we took that route, because Digital tems offer unmatched design freedom and allow us to justify huge changes such as this.

Thus, the first stage was written down as Digital/Nature, while the final stage was Digital/Mental, with some shared elements like the stick, the glow of the shell and the horns.

The design was a bit on the open end of things, and the original references required a lot of adaptation to fit in the Temtem world. For the first stage, Tutorxic wanted the tem to hold a stick in its mouth, and wanted to see that same stick in the final stage, floating by effect of psychokinesis.
This is the batch of possible approaches created to see which one scratched the itch better. We followed the stick-in-mouth perspective, but also explored other options with 100% less stick. It was, nevertheless, up to the Backer’s final verdict.



Following Tutorxic’s feedback, and a couple of iterations later, we went with the head of #5, the body and eyes of #2, and the stick from #3. And that’s how the little dude was born. Here’s a rough sketch from the time, and the final concept turnarounds:



Similarly, these were the initial designs we created for its final stage. The color palette changed to accommodate and better represent the Mental type.



Tutorxic wanted to try a mix betweent #2 and #4, while keeping the stick placement from #1. He really liked the idea of a doll bursting at the seams, with the stuffing spilling out, so the final design incorporated that bit.

Here’s the big dude’s final sketch and concept turnarounds:



As for their names, we started from Tutorxic’s initial desire of having them be based off Tortoise or Turtle. The first stage had to cover a cute word or theme, while he wanted the final stage to include “Loa”, the good spirits of Voodoo in some regions. We were trying to avoid having another tem name start with “Tu-“, because the Tuwai line has completely monopolized that syllable. After a lot of brainstorming and back and forth, we reached Pupoise (puppy + tortoise) and Loatle (Loa + turtle).

The choice of Luma colors followed a very simple decision process: Tutorxic gave us free way for it, we tested some palettes and really liked the way purple looked. So we gave them purple lumas. Sometimes game dev really is as simple as that.




[h2]The Gardens of Azatlan[/h2]
This new route, accessible from Tucma, was thought up by Soma, the same Breeder who conceived the Volarend line. To get to the Gardens of Azatlan you’ll need to take the new elevator in the Tucma Airport. This elevator, that didn’t exist before and was added for the specific purpose of this route. will take you down to a lower level, a new zone that stands just above the mist, closely surrounded by it.

This is how the entryway was designed:


And this is its final look in-game:


For the first part of the route Soma wanted a crystal path surrounded by trees. The one quirk? He wanted the path to be multicolored. Just like what happened with the snow in Kilima peaks, it was a first for us and for Temtem. The natural inspiration behind this part are the coastal and swampland areas of Louisiana, in the US, but with a crystal aesthetic. The trees resemble the great swamp cypresses that grow from the murky water, and flank the boardwalk path with their lovely colors. Whether there’s a special meaning to the shape of the path or not is a mystery.



As you walk amidst the floating lights and the falling petals, and across the crystal patch, you’ll reach a more open zone. The highlight of this part is the tall tree standing on top of the hill, crystallized like the rest but with a greater amount of detail. A similar tree has been growing in Soma’s backyard ever since he was young. You’ll be able to battle Soma there!

This is the final in-game look:


That’s it for this entry on Breeder content! We hope you’ve enjoyed seeing the before and after of the new route and tems.

We also have a bit of glum info to share on this matter: due to unfortunate and unforeseen circumstances regarding the design process, we will not be moving forward with the tem and route from the remaining Breeder Backer. For the past two years we’ve been trying to reach a point where both parties were satisfied, but ultimately we’ve been unable to and now there’s simply not enough time to continue with the process. After talking it out with the Backer, we’ll take over and go with one of our internal designs to fill that Temtem slot and route. This also means that there’s only one Tutorxic's Breeder route left now. Please look forward to it!

As for us, we’re working hard on the latest update of the Cipanku cycle. It will include new quests, new gears, interesting QOL improvements, and if you play with a controller you might wanna hold it tighter after the patch 👀

See you next time and Temtem up!

Temtem's Cipanku island update is live now, adding a new region to the monster taming MMO - plus new Temtem to catch, a teleport sytem, and a lot else. There's a new trailer below that outlines all the new features.

Read more