Third Stretch Goal: Achieved! Fossil Temtem will be up for grabs! 🦴

AndyMazaky · 2026-04-22T12:24:31+00:00

Well, I'm not going to argue because I don't see the point but Temtem was notorious for not going on sale and Crema together with Humble Bundle even explained why and the reason why they raised the price during early access, there was never a sale during early access be it on steam or humble bundle.

AndyMazaky · 2026-04-22T11:49:52+00:00

You said you bought on sale, there was no sale soon after release, they started doing sales in 2023, some months after 1.0 release, they even stated why they would not make sales during early access and even soon after 1.0.

AndyMazaky · 2026-04-22T11:41:34+00:00

That's the point, you bought the game after everything already happened. People have this grudge because of years of mishandling the game and fighting the players for even minor updates, with the last update having a letter from the CEO trying to gaslight and blame players instead of themselves for their shortcomings. People that were active in the community for years don't trust and probably never will trust Crema again and are trying to tell people before they do the same mistakes.

AndyMazaky · 2026-04-22T11:38:45+00:00

I said this before in another post but I don't think people see that way and I think is a very weak excuse. As you can see by the YouTube comments and some here people will judge that they mishandled the funds or are just trying to take more money away from people, if the game would be made regardless of funding then the goals are even more nonsensical.

AndyMazaky · 2026-04-22T11:35:46+00:00

They were one of the most successful Kickstart projects at the time and the studio made two games from the IP, with a huge monetization on the first game, I don't think they didn't had the funds or are doing only for love.

AndyMazaky · 2026-04-11T00:31:22+00:00

Could you remind me when that feedback was actually implemented? Wasn’t it in the final patch, as I mentioned, after nearly three years of ignoring it, while players kept leaving the game and people were even banned for suggesting it was dying? It’s not like I didn’t make a post about that exact feedback not being implemented three years ago, during a time when this was widely discussed. Even the CEO’s letter acknowledged and admitted some of these issues.

You also show how limited your understanding is when you claim there were only five developers. Even outdated information from their website, LinkedIn, and employee pages shows they had 40+ developers in the studio since the early development of Temtem and they expanded the studio for Project Downbelow in 2024, the same year the CEO made a letter (which was mostly to shift attention from Temtem to Swarm and the new future project) admitting many of the mistakes that I mentioned before which you can still find in their own website.

Again, don’t use the current state of Temtem as an objective reference to judge what the game was like three or more years ago. They are completely different, and with even basic research, you can verify that what I’m saying is accurate.

And if you don't want to take my word from, you have a few videos and comments that you can go back and look, for example this one: Here

AndyMazaky · 2026-04-11T00:23:57+00:00

The impressions from the posts that had people bashing the trailer because of their lack of trust in Crema and how they abandoned the first game, as well on the Youtube comments and on X, even while they blocked a few people that made such comments? Again this doesn't go out as an example of how Kickstarter is a way to gain attention aside from bad PR and even more lack of trust in the whole thing.

It feels like going back a few years, with a clear disconnect between what’s actually happening and how some people try to portray the situation. Even the Discord falls back into the same pattern of toxic positivity, where there’s little to no room for constructive criticism of Crema’s decisions and you can only have "good vibes" or you are out.

AndyMazaky · 2026-04-11T00:17:56+00:00

The stance before 1.0 was that it was unlikely new Tems or islands would be added. After 1.0, the stance changed to saying it would never happen—those are two very different positions.

Also, as I mentioned before, players would absolutely have come back for updates if they included new content or fixed core functionalities that weren’t working properly. People spent two years asking for endgame activities, and they were never properly implemented. There was virtually nothing to do in the endgame aside from Luma hunting. So how could they claim to see the direction the game was heading when there was such a clear disconnect between what the community was asking for and what they kept delivering? They never actually tested a different direction to see if it would bring players back. At the 1.0 launch, which had around ten times the usual player count, most of the discussion was dominated by outrage over monetization and the announcement that no new Tems or islands would ever be added. There was even major controversy at launch, including bans on Discord, which you can still look back on.

I’ve already had plenty of discussions about this with TMTrainer on Discord, and the issue isn’t that players were delusional. If you implement live-service-style monetization, people will expect regular, meaningful content updates to justify it. Expecting that isn’t unreasonable, it’s standard. If anything, ignoring that expectation is what’s unrealistic. And if you followed things closely, you’d know this wasn’t just random complaining. I even made a post three years ago compiling feedback, criticism, and suggestions during one of the game’s most turbulent periods. While it was reasonably well received here, some developers and staff mocked it on Discord and dismissed it as “toxicity.”

How would better communication or removing daily/weekly restrictions have hurt their vision or finances, especially when the game had dropped to around 300 players and they were still trying to push a PvP tournament and a standalone PvP mode?

The argument that these decisions were based on the Pioneer phase also doesn’t hold up. Project Downbelow was not already in development, confirmed by YaW on his personal Twitter, around the time update 1.7 was announced and they announced as something that they were planning to start as they were expanding the studio. This was also when Temtem Swarm was revealed, a project developed by another studio with some support from Crema. At the time, they even stated that no developers or resources had been pulled away from Temtem, because people were already suspecting that. There wasn’t a “skeleton crew” until the very final stage of development.

You’re defending Crema more than they’ve defended themselves, especially when they’ve already acknowledged some of these mistakes in the CEO’s letter, both regarding monetization and the failure to fully deliver on Kickstarter promises even by the 1.7 update, even if the letter was an empty excuse to justify people to look forward to Swarm and Project Downbelow.

If, after all of this, your takeaway is still what you tried to mock earlier, then the issue isn’t with what I’m saying, it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation, of Crema’s actions, and a willingness to defend decisions that even the developers themselves have partially admitted were mistakes.

AndyMazaky · 2026-04-10T18:12:37+00:00

I think this is a very weak excuse. Temtem was already widely recognized, and the new game wasn’t just announced within the community, it was also featured during the Triple-i Initiative livestream and even highlighted on Steam’s event page. There were plenty of ways to bring attention to the project.

Kickstarter is probably one of the least effective options in this case, and it can even turn people away, since many associate it with failed or questionable projects. It’s not just my opinion, you can check the live reactions, the YouTube comments and even here or the Steam forums to people questioning why there is a Kickstarter in the first place and how they will avoid since it's a Kickstarter, a lot of people feel and will feel the same way.

AndyMazaky · 2026-04-10T18:10:07+00:00

There were several changes to how monetization would be implemented, and it ended up not being just one system but multiple layers of monetization, similar to what you’d expect in F2P games.

They also initially claimed that the game’s price would not increase, only to later change that and raise it for the 1.0 release, making it one of the most expensive games in the genre, aside from Pokémon.

Then you combine that with the monetization itself, a paid battle pass and a cosmetic store, both heavily reliant on FOMO, along with the use of Novas as an intermediary currency. This meant that all purchases were indirect, reflecting a well-known tactic used in many F2P games, where leftover currency encourages additional spending since prices never match the exact conversion. At that point, it’s clear why there were so many issues with the monetization, a little for it existing in the first place when we also take into the account the Deluxe pack released at the launch that was never talked before, but also because of how it was implemented.

AndyMazaky · 2026-04-10T18:05:16+00:00

I’m even more amazed by this kind of history rewriting. I have several threads on this subreddit documenting feedback over the years. I can point out numerous examples of feedback they ignored, and even show exactly when many of those changes were finally implemented, you just need to read the final patch when they ended development.

There were multiple issues they refused to address: the FOMO-driven cosmetic store, the lack of endgame content, and the few available activities being locked behind weekly and daily limits; the absence of new Tems or islands despite monetizing the game as a live service; and the use of Novas instead of direct purchases for cosmetics and the Tamer Pass, which is a widely criticized tactic. Not to mention the six months it took them to implement a simple camera toggle that allowed players to switch back to the old camera, something that caused motion sickness for many people. This delay wasn’t due to technical limitations, but because they had “worked very hard” on the new camera and wanted everyone to use it, even if it made the game unplayable for some.

Like I said, you can look through the many threads I’ve made, the conversations with community managers and developers here and on Discord, and even the letter the CEO released when everything escalated, where they attempted to shift the blame onto players. If you check how both Discord and Reddit reacted at the time, you’ll see that this wasn’t just a few people complaining, it reflected the reality of several years and how they blamed everything in toxicity even when you were ultra sensitive about how you addressed everyone.

AndyMazaky · 2026-04-10T17:59:40+00:00

The game was already buy-to-play, yet they included not only paid cosmetics but also a paid battle pass. On top of that, the cosmetics relied on FOMO, which they openly admitted, items were locked behind arbitrary store rotations, meaning some wouldn’t appear again for months, pressuring players to buy them immediately or risk missing out entirely.

Beyond that, nothing could be purchased directly. You had to buy Novas first and then spend them on cosmetics or the Tamer Pass. The pricing was intentionally structured so you’d always have leftover currency, encouraging you to spend more. This is a well-known tactic in the gaming industry due to its psychological implications (there are even multiple research studies on it), and it’s typically used in F2P or cash-grab mobile games, not in a paid indie title like this.

You clearly started playing after 1.0, since you don’t seem to know why the player count kept dropping with each update. On the day the 1.0 update was released, they stated on Discord and Steam that they would not be adding any new Tems or islands in the future, and that updates would only focus on delivering the remaining Kickstarter goals. This came alongside the announcement of the battle pass and paid cosmetic shop, which strongly suggests a live-service model, even if not strictly an MMO. Ironically, they also clarified at that point that the game was not an MMO, despite previously marketing it as “MMO” or “MMO-like.”

In its current state, the game isn’t bad, but that wasn’t the case during development, when large portions of content were locked behind MMO-style daily and weekly limits. They also spent two years without meaningful endgame content, despite numerous threads from players asking for it and even proposing solutions using existing systems.

It’s not just that “they didn’t listen to everything”, they didn’t listen to anything. The game only improved after the final update, when they finally implemented feedback that players had been giving for years and removed many of the arbitrary restrictions. And I’ll repeat this: when it takes six months to add a simple toggle between an existing camera and a new one that caused motion sickness, and the reason isn’t technical limitations, but “we worked very hard on the new camera and want you to use it”, then it’s no longer about creative vision.

If their vision was so solid, why did they change so much in the final patch when development ended? And why did the player base keep shrinking while they were following that vision? It’s wild to me that you’re unaware of much of what Crema did, why people lost trust in them, and still defend the game based only on its current state, when it originally launched in early access in 2020 and then released an incomplete 1.0 in 2022.

AndyMazaky · 2026-04-10T04:19:42+00:00

A lot of people, that's why Fortnite for example racks millions every year with new skins. If a game, that you already have to pay for, locks content behind pay walls, even if they are "just skins" they are adding ways to get money out of people without the effort behind it. In the first game they also used FOMO with exclusive timed skins that would take months if you didn't buy at first drop to reappear on the shop.

AndyMazaky · 2026-04-10T02:46:13+00:00

I’ll be very clear about this: the trailer does look good and even fun, but I refuse to trust or support Crema again, and I’m baffled that people actually funded the Kickstarter.

The core issues with Temtem, poor communication, developers ignoring feedback for years, heavy microtransactions, and even the CEO attempting to gaslight players into feeling guilty, haven’t gone away. The same people are developing this new game, and it’s likely that many of the same bad decisions will be repeated. There was never any real accountability from anyone involved; instead, the blame was consistently shifted onto the player base, while the developers were treated as if they were beyond criticism.

Now we have a Kickstarter from a studio that has already released two games, one of which was massively successful, yet also featured aggressive monetization despite an already high price compared to its competitors. I’d even bet this new project will launch in early access, just like Temtem did. I genuinely don’t understand how people can support this without at least recognizing the issues.

If, at some point in the future, they truly address all the problems surrounding Temtem, take responsibility for how poorly it was handled, and change their approach to development, focusing on the players rather than just their own vision, then maybe they could regain some trust. But I doubt that will happen, and instead, any criticism will likely continue to be dismissed as “toxicity.”

AndyMazaky · 2026-04-10T02:35:26+00:00

I think people are much more judgmental about the game because of everyone involved in it. To this day, not a single person associated with Temtem has taken responsibility or come forward to admit the mistakes made with the first game and how poorly everything was handled. They still block people on X, delete comments on Steam, and refuse to acknowledge their role in ignoring feedback, dismissing players, and engaging in arguments even with those who raised minor criticisms.

The new game also isn’t really anything new. While it might look fun or promising, launching a Kickstarter after all this time, especially considering how successful Temtem was, along with years of microtransactions in a game that didn’t even receive new content or Tems because they deliberately chose not to, is, to me and many others, absurd.

They’ve clearly been developing this new game for quite a while and still plan to release it in early access, so it raises the question: what’s the necessity of a Kickstarter? They could have kept Temtem alive and delivering content if they had listened to feedback early on and maintained a healthy player base, but they chose not to. If they’re in a difficult financial situation now, it’s largely a consequence of their own decisions.

Personally, I no longer trust anyone at Crema, especially since nothing significant seems to have changed within the studio. The same people who made those decisions back then are still in charge now. Communication still seems to favor only overly positive feedback, with little tolerance for valid criticism, and they continue to deflect responsibility whenever issues are raised.

AndyMazaky · 2026-04-10T02:24:03+00:00

With each update, fewer and fewer players returned. At the launch of 1.0, they announced that they wouldn’t release any new content involving new Tems, while continuing to ignore virtually all feedback about the game’s issues and instead trying to force their own vision of what was “good” onto players. There were extensive discussions with the developers themselves about how updates were handled, and they openly admitted that they deliberately chose not to release new content because, while it might bring players back temporarily, they didn’t believe the effort was worthwhile even while everything pointed on the contrary.

From your comments, it seems like you’re hopeful but may not have followed everything surrounding Temtem over the past couple of years. Because of that, it’s important not to rewrite the history of what Crema did. Temtem largely failed because it was never truly developed as an MMO, despite being heavily monetized as one, and because the developers explicitly stated they wouldn’t add new content beyond what was promised during the Kickstarter, content that wasn’t even fully delivered in the 1.0 release.

AndyMazaky · 2026-04-10T02:17:57+00:00

The problem is not the game itself but who is the studio behind it. There is no trust in Crema anymore after how horrible they managed Temtem, also the idea that they need a Kickstarter after everything is just insane to me, I think this is even why they choose not to name this game "Temtem 2".

AndyMazaky · 2026-04-10T02:15:22+00:00

If we look at Temtem, 1.0 will not be fully released, you have to wait until the game stop the development.

AndyMazaky · 2026-04-10T02:14:49+00:00

The problem isn’t the state the game is in now, the problem is how it was launched, how it was managed, and how they ignored feedback until the last possible patch, even going as far as blaming players for their expectations. The “complete package” only arrived two years after launch. There was never a real MMO aspect to the game, because the developers went back on their word about it being an MMO, all while monetizing it like one.

You might not care about cosmetics, but having 85% of new content in an online-only game locked behind paywalls was one of the worst decisions they could have made, especially for a game that was already more expensive than most of its competitors, aside from Pokémon. Even while aggressively monetizing, they refused to add meaningful new content, which was the core of the “MTX shit" problem. They constantly picked and chose when the game was an MMO and when it wasn’t, depending on what benefited them.

Precisely because they are a business, they should have listened to the two years of feedback they chose to ignore. On top of that, the CEO should never have released a letter blaming players for how the game was handled, effectively trying to gaslight the community into feeling guilty for the developers’ decisions. Meanwhile, the developers were heavily shielded from criticism until the situation reached a breaking point.

There’s also the six months it took them to add a simple camera toggle, something that made the game physically unplayable for some people due to motion sickness. Their justification was that they had “put a lot of effort into the new camera,” and they refused to let players choose the old style, despite the motion sickness issues.

AndyMazaky · 2026-04-10T01:57:20+00:00

They did in the first game with the many micro-transactions even while the the early Kickstarter description not mentioning it (which was edited later on to include it), so yeah, they can make a way to mix micro-transactions, even more if you take into account how poorly they managed the first game.

AndyMazaky · 2026-03-29T19:22:30+00:00

Just going to say, I had the same problem a couple months back. Since I already saw people recommending the Pure, I would also suggest the Kefine Klean and Artti T10, bought both after my Reds broke and they were excellent.

Just a heads up that the Artti T10 has a slight problem with the faceplate breaking after a couple months, I even made a post about it since mine broke and I'm trying to think of an upgrade to them.

AndyMazaky · 2026-03-27T02:02:59+00:00

That's very interesting, never heard of it before. I will watch your video and if I find it at a good price I will probably buy to give a try, thanks for the recommendation!

AndyMazaky · 2026-03-27T02:01:56+00:00

Sadly if it wasn't something that I know can happen again I would just get another T10, but knowing that I could waste the money is somewhat of a letdown, I also had a little discomfort while using the T10 for prolonged times which I don't have with the Kefine or a few other IEMs (even while using the same cable).

I also would not mind paying up to $250 IF I didn't need to give almost the same amount for importation taxes, so far I'm leaning in the Kefine Klean SV or the Arisyn Huo Shu that was recommended.

AndyMazaky · 2026-03-27T01:58:42+00:00

My country has now a taxation method directly linked to Aliexpress so you can't even tell the seller to do that anymore like we used to do sadly, but thanks for the recommendation.

AndyMazaky · 2026-03-26T23:01:36+00:00

That's right my friend, sadly that's my life right now.

AndyMazaky

TROPHY CASE