Hello tamers! We hope that you’ve had a good start to 2021 and that, whatever you’re doing in this weird year, you’re having a blast doing it.

We’re writing today to share some insights on the current state of the project, our hopes for the future, and some questions you’ve been sending our way.

First and foremost, let’s talk about the elephant in the room: is our current roadmap up to date? Unfortunately, and as most of you know already, it is not.

We made the current roadmap right after our Early Access launch in February of last year—before we knew the sort of year 2020 was going to be—and while we’ve always stressed the fact that the roadmap was not set in stone, it certainly doesn’t match reality anymore. We’ve had to twist and change our plans quite a few times since the EA launch, sometimes because of good stuff, other times not so much. I’m sure you’ve all seen this happen a lot this year, and we understand this is disappointing for everyone (including us!). We’re really sorry.

You’ve been asking us for an updated roadmap, and we’ve been thinking hard about it, but in the end, it just doesn’t feel like it would do justice to our vision for Temtem, and to you. Closed dates add a lot of pressure and put another load on our shoulders, and we want to focus on delivering the highest quality content possible, and ship it when it’s ready.

Rest assured, though: we’re still going to deliver everything on the original roadmap PLUS unexpected in-between content to keep things fresh between big updates! You’ve already experienced some of these unexpected features like the latest content update, which included fishing, dojo rematches, postal service, and wishing wells.  None of these features had been announced beforehand, and many weren’t even planned, but looking at user feedback we believe they were necessary even if they meant a change in plans. We cannot blindly keep on developing the game we had in mind at the beginning of all this. New islands are important, but we believe that so is providing new content in-between. We hope these little surprises help make the wait between big updates a little more fun.

We want you to know what’s coming, but we want to make sure that we have the ability to make decisions based on giving players the best game possible versus making hard choices to hit our previously set dates. From now onwards, please take the current roadmap as a way to see all planned features in one convenient place.

Although we will continue working with the previous goals in mind, including the upcoming console launch and game completion, we’d rather keep deadlines internal only. That way we can continue working with a tight aim in mind, while knowing that our playerbase is aware that these deadlines are no longer solid and require a broader range of expectations. We’re still working hard as ever, but we also want to avoid further disappointment to our community.

As for the often questioned “Cipanku when”, we’re currently targeting the end of March/beginning of April. There are some unknown features, things that will surprise and delight you, and we hope that, in retrospective, the wait will be worth it. We’ve currently halted all bug fixing to focus entirely on testing out the new content, but this also means some bugs might take a while to get fixed. We apologize for the inconveniences this might cause.

We know this isn’t a fun convo, and we’re sorry it’s been such a long slab of text. Thanks for putting up with it, and for being patient while we found the right words. We wanted to reward your patience and support, and to balance all this boring news, with the very first look at ✨Cipanku✨:

Pretty, huh? This long-awaited island also includes some spicy new tems that will surely change the dynamics of the game up until now and a very long list of balance changes that have taken your feedback into account on top of what was internally planned. Some QOL changes heavily requested by the community (hello teleport!) are also on their way. And it’s full of anime references, winks to pop culture and tons of little details that will be the delight of all us weebs.

Thanks, as ever, for your continued support and understanding. We’ll do our best to continue progressing and improving with our help, and you can always reach out to us at our Forums, Discord Server, and socials.