Temtem Showdown Is Struggling But It’s Game Director Isn’t Too Concerned

It's been a little over a month since Crema Games surprised the Temtem community with the launch of a standalone game called Temtem Showdown. Unfortunately, the free-to-play PvP-centric spinoff couldn’t quite follow in the footsteps of the original game, although that looks like it’s not doing too good either.

Temtem Showdown has received “Mixed” reviews on Steam, with more recent reviews sitting at “Mostly Negative.” Most of the complaints are aimed at the spinoff's unhelpful tutorial and gameplay that requires previous knowledge of the original game's mechanics. The game's playerbase has also dropped from an all-time peak concurrency of 186 players on launch to a 24-hour peak of just 14 players which is a bad sign considering that it’s a PvP matchmaking game.

Game Director Guillermo Andrades promptly rushed to defend the standalone game, arguing that adding more zones, monsters, and dojos would do little to boost the dwindling playerbase. Andrades added that developing the MMO was costly and the small increase in interest from such additions would not cover the expense. He also acknowledged that making Temtem Showdown more grindy instead of giving players access to monsters right off the bat could drive players away as the original game is already grindy enough to begin with.

“That's why we're trying different things that help Temtem in the long run and are more cost-efficient,” Andrades said. “Showdown was cheap to build because it uses the same foundation as Temtem and required few devs during a few weeks to be built.”

While Andrades claimed that Temtem's PvP community is relatively large compared to the total user base, he did admit that Showdown's release did not meet expectations. He referred back to a 2018 statement where he emphasized that the original game was never meant to be massively scaled, focusing on MMO social features instead of large-scale raids, dungeons, or endless quests.

Meanwhile, the original game continues to average a daily peak concurrency of around 1,300 players, a big drop from 39,000 record-high peak concurrency that it set four years ago. Despite the challenges, it looks like Crema Games is determined to stick with its vision for the Temtem franchise, although Temtem Showdown's future is looking pretty bleak.