Temtem: Swarm looks like an enticing mix of Vampire Survivors and Pokémon
rockpapershotgun.comTemtem was a brief mega-hit when it launched in Early Access back in 2020, as a Pokémon-like that was both online and on PC. Now it's getting its own "survivor-like bullet heaven" spin-off called Temtem: Swarm.
By "survivor-like", I think they mean Vampire Survivors-like. This is topdown game in which you run around, grow absurdly powerful, and battle huge, well, swarms - all of which seems deeply familiar.
In fairness, in what is becoming a rapidly crowded genre, there's plenty that Temtem: Swarm seems to do differently. It's 3D, for one, and you can play it alone or in on-line co-op with up to three players.
Your character upgrades are also, of course, evolutions of your Tems, which Crema say introduces the strategy of the original Temtem to the survivor-like genre. That extends to your co-op squads, where there are synergies to be found between different teams of Tems, and you'll need to make use of them in order to battle bosses as well as the swarms of weaker creeps.
I wrote up top that Temtem was a "brief mega-hit", because my sense is that people had their fill of it in Early Access and it never had another peak. Crema did right by the game though, and Hayden liked it a lot when he reviewed Temtem 1.0 in 2022, arguing that in many ways it surpassed its inspiration.
Temtem: Swarm is aiming to release sometime this autumn. It's up on Steam now.
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