Temtem: Pioneers revealed as a survival crafting spin-off, Kickstarter is live

Crema has officially revealed Temtem: Pioneers, the project previously known as Project Downbelow. The announcement came during the Triple-i Showcase, and it marks a pretty big shift for the series. Instead of the main game’s turn-based battles, Pioneers is an open-world survival crafting game with real-time combat.

According to the official Kickstarter campaign, players will explore a new region called the Downbelow, gather resources, build bases, and use Temtem for combat, traversal, and survival tasks. Crema says the game supports solo play and co-op.

The studio is pitching more than 200 Temtem in total, including new species from the Downbelow alongside returning creatures. Combat lets you bring up to three Temtem and swap between them on the fly, with dodging and combo-based real-time action replacing the usual turn structure.

That makes Pioneers less of a direct follow-up to Temtem and more of a genre spin-off set in the same universe. The creature collecting is still there, but the core loop sounds closer to survival sandbox games, with exploration, crafting, and settlement building taking center stage.

Right now, Temtem: Pioneers is planned for PC on Steam and the Epic Games Store. Crema says console versions are being discussed, but nothing is confirmed yet. The game also has a Steam page live for wishlisting.

Crema didn’t announce a release date in the reveal. For now, the main immediate step is the Kickstarter, which is live starting today.

Temtem has had a remarkable history. The original game was a Pokemon clone and then they pivoted to Vampire Survivors clone with Temtem: Swarm, and now they’re capitalizing on the popularity of the co-op survival genre.