Reynad won't be able to ban me here

I hate this game. You will perfect an intricate series of hyper-linked perfect items for eleven days and then be immediately killed by a pig with a tree. You will become a property lord with 500 gold and a 2-second cooldown instakill skyscraper, defeated by a robot with three dinosaurs. And then you'll get a perfect game with three mosquitos and a dishwasher.

Over 100 hours in the non-steam version of this game! Highly DO NOT RECOMMEND this game. The core gameplay is pretty fun, the art style is good, but you can get similar experiences with other games on the market (backpack battles). There are numerous technical issues with this game (like run progress being reset!), lots of annoying bugs that have existed since the beginning. However the most concerning aspects of this game are its monetization, management, and moderation. Us early backers (way back on IndieGogo https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-bazaar--4#/) were promised a F2P experience where heroes could be unlocked with in-game currency. There were numerous controversies (NFTs) before that but this is the dealbreaker for me personally. They have been silencing everybody on Discord/Reddit who even have questions about the latest monetization rug-pull and it is truly saddening. This game has no future. It has ping-ponged between free to play/pay to play, and now look at the DLCs available at launch. It is clearly a get-rich-quick scheme by the creator who has no interest in supporting this game long-term. Above all, investors have sued the CEO and won... that should make you think twice about spending your money or what time you want to invest in a game.

I did not even get into the game play before asking for a refund. Something that is not stated is you have to create an account to play the game. No choice at all. You have to enter your email address and chose a 10 digit secure password. But then came the EULA. "The Company collects, stores, maintains, and shares limited identifying information about You in accordance with Our Privacy Policy. By accepting this Agreement, You acknowledge that You hereby agree and consent to the terms and conditions of Our Privacy Policy." Shares information? No thank you. And it does say based on our privacy policy. But that was not clearly defined in the EULA so I looked at the company Privacy policy. "While using Our Application, in order to provide features of Our Application, We may collect, with Your prior permission, information regarding your location, information from your Device’s contacts list, and/or pictures and other information from your Device’s camera and photo library." I see mobile cross over but a company that is do blatant about the data collection Then the sharing... "We may share Your personal information in the following situations:" "With Our business partners to offer You certain products, services, or promotions." -and- "With Your consent, we may disclose Your personal information for any other purpose." Be careful what you sign up for.

DO NOT PLAY THIS. edit: 500$ worth of mtx day one btw I played this game for 500h (proof: https://imgur.com/a/aJ9b3Hx ) and i have seen some stuff The Tempo team and specifically their boss reynad are scummy as hell. I have never seen that many lies, 180's, censorship from a single company. The game was supposed to be free 2 play. Now they're changing that. The game was supposed to be a crypto game, they said that over and over again in early development. Then everyone hated NFT's and they started pretending that their crypto idea was just some vague idea that was never really something they seriously thought about. When reynad literally said they wouldnt release on console/steam because they didnt allow it. The game was promised to not have pay 2 win, then when expansions came you could pay to get them before other people. The marketplace was still supposed to come just without the crypto, a lot of people farmed chests to get the early cosmetics to trade later. Marketplace is no longer comming and the chests are no longer season specific. Everything just became worthless. Game was not coming to steam they said because steam takes a 30% cut. They said it could still come later to be fair. But they wouldnt just bring it without some gaslighting. Eventually some time ago they started saying that oh well our launcher was ALWAYS just gonna be a temporary thing (complete lie). I called it right there that it was coming to steam and of course now they announced it. Those are just a few examples. Then there is the censorship. I doubt there is a discord server and subreddit with a higher % of permanent bans than their discord and subreddit, oh and steam forums too. And there are no warnings. You're immediatelly permanently banned, not for insulting them or anything. Just by stating some facts in some cases. They will be vague in their wording and then when you clarify the ACTUAL facts you get permabanned. I was just banned from the subreddit because someone said in the steam announcement thread that cool, now they can get it on the steamdeck and play it everywhere. I just replied that yeah but it will cost you 45$ even if you already have an account with all the heroes. This is a fact, they said it themselves in the discord. But god forbid someone else says it. I got banned from the discord too for saying they should give steam keys to early backers because i'm just being punished for supporting them by being forced to continue to play in their atrocious launcher. Go on their subreddit and find a negative thread about the news. It doesnt exist, they delete everything. They opened a mega thread for the steam release, but some of the deleted threads werent even really about the steam release. Regardless, they know megathreads dont have the same visibility so even then it's a way to try and silence negativity. And btw if you check on that mega thread regularly, you'll see that half the comments are being deletes. if you want to see some examples of the the pathetic reasons they ban people for, just go over to https://www.reddit.com/r/TheBazaar/ the subreddit not controlled by them and look at the threads from the last few days. Oh and btw did i mention that they have always done this and a while ago people were pissed about them being in control of the subreddit. What did they do? They made an announcement saying they would be giving the subreddit to the community. Did they do it? No, a while later they deleted the announcement and stayed in control. Not to mention that reynad is a religious fanatic talking about jesus second coming, believes some crazy alien conspiracy theories and doesnt believe that we were to space because quote 'i dont know anyone who went to space and neither do you'. I guess by his logic plenty of countries are a conspiracy theory too because i dont know anyone that went there. Good talks to him personally, also satan is coming to earth after world war 3 and then jesus has to save us. you cant make this.

At its core, The Bazaar is a great game. I've played the game before it came to Steam since March 2025 and have just short of 400 hours in it. I've seen its highs and I've seen its lows. Sadly, despite how good the game itself might be, the reason I don't recommend this game isn't because of it, but rather because of the development team. Here's why.

• Balance Up to this point, there's been four seasons. Each season has introduced ten new cards for two of the heroes. Every single one of those expansions has dominated the meta, before being heavily nerfed. The design team is clearly inexperienced, but even worse than that, it's painfully obvious that they just don't balance test the content they're putting out. When patch notes are released, the problematic cards are blatantly easy to identify, to the point where it's baffling that they didn't see the issue. No one is going to get balance perfectly right all of the time, but they drop the ball 100% of the time. To add to this, now that heroes are locked behind a $20 purchase, when those heroes get a new expansion and are crushing everyone else as a result, you're going to have to either fork out money or just accept that you can't make it to 10 wins until they get nerfed. Stelle is already looking exactly like this.
• Censorship Tempo Storm doesn't take criticism well. Like, at all. Even constructive. Fortunately, they can't silence us here in Steam reviews so we can speak freely, but they won't hesitate to ban you from the sub-Reddit or their Discord if you speak out. With the recent announcement of the game switching from FTP to BTP, they were explicitly instructed by the CEO to perma-ban anyone voicing any form of concerns. I myself was banned for questioning why existing users of the game should be expected to pay $40 to play a game they already have access to. It feels especially telling that after all this backlash, they changed up their plan and decided to sell the game with Stelle for $20 (although, for three days only). As usual, the community is right, they realize they screwed up and fix it, but of course they're not going to un-ban anyone who pointed this out to them. It's childish, and not at all professional.
• Monetization This is possibly the biggest issue. At this point, the game has changed its monetization structure four times. It started out as an NFT game. Yeah. Then it turned into a FTP game for its closed beta. With the release of open beta, when I started, they had the brilliant plan of asking for a $10 monthly subscription to get double chest rewards, AND to have a separate $10 seasonal battle pass. This battle pass contained the expansions mentioned above, meaning that if you didn't buy it, you didn't get the new OP cards. It was directly selling power, and as you can imagine, people rioted. (And got banned, of course, cause that's the only way Tempo knows how to deal with upset players). Realizing they'd screwed up, Tempo pivoted into a FTP battle pass with paid skips, allowing people to still spend money (or gems!) to unlock the card expansions earlier than FTP players who were stuck slowly grinding them out from daily play. As a result, players who did buy the new cards on day one had a massive advantage over those who did not (as we already mentioned, Tempo cannot balance anything without community help) and then by the time FTP players finally did unlock the new cards, they'd been nerfed into the ground, quite often to the point where they made the hero weaker thanks to diluting the item pool. This is the model we've lived with for most of the game. And now, the final fourth monetization transition, they're going drastic once again, and taking a game that was entirely free to play and asking for a whopping $40. And then if you want to play any of the heroes beyond the first three, you need to fork out an extra $20 per. It's insane, and not even remotely worth it (imo). Because at this point, after changing things so many times, how can you trust them not to change it yet again? Just as an example, they've talked about a mobile port for a long ass time. You can't charge $40 for a mobile game (seriously, no one would ever buy at that price) so how is that going to work? Are they going to make the game FTP again? I haven't even gotten to the fact that all of this was dropped on players with only a weeks notice, and we all expected to be able to buy Stelle with the gems we'd farmed from playing the game, just like we had with every hero before. A typical bait and switch. Fortunately for me, I'd already cancelled my monthly subscription since the balance issues were already turning me off the game, but I know people whose subscriptions renewed right before this announcement and basically just lost all the value of that $10. It's gross and manipulative, and 100% defines everything Tempo stands for.

So there you go, now you at least have more context on the history of the game up to its Steam launch. If you choose to still give it a shot, I seriously hope you won't come to regret it, but strongly fear that you will. Especially if you buy in for the full asking price of $40.

Response to Developer Comment

For seven hours, this review had a developer response before they chose to remove it. While I do have that reply screenshotted and could post an Imgur link to it here, I will respect their decision to remove it. That said, it’s already been posted in multiple places online, so I’ll leave it to those who may be curious to look it up. Before its removal, I was in the middle of replying to it, and even though it’s now gone, I would still like to respond to its claims: First things first, I certainly didn’t expect to wake up and find a developer response to my review. Thanks for boosting its visibility, I sincerely appreciate it. I just have a few quick things to say in response.

• The opening point frankly makes no sense to me. Those ‘imbalanced expansions’ are indeed still in the game, saying they aren’t would imply that they’d been removed. Rather, they were balanced after their initial release. This… is literally the entire point I made above. Brokenly OP cards are added to the game and then balanced well after people have spent on them.
• As the NFT system was before I started playing the game, I specifically left it as a mere seven-word mention in the main review. It’s an extremely minor aspect of the much larger monetization issues facing the game since its closed beta release, and it seems strange to focus so much on just that single point while ignoring everything else.
• Finally, the reply stated that bans happen for specific reasons, and yet none of the listed ones apply to the post I made that got me banned. I certainly didn’t attack anyone, and I didn’t lie or spread misinformation, I simply asked a question. For full disclosure, I already posted a link to my ban in literally the first comment to allow anyone curious to see what is considered a ban-worthy post.

Jacked the price up to $40 the day before I bought it. Figured "oh well, you snooze you lose. " Then, two days later they cut the price in half an add a free DLC. Can't refund it. Their own support is silent. Their community manager on Discord suggested I just get over it. Trash commercial practices. I see why people are furious.

WARNING: While the gameplay is top notch there are some considerations when playing this game, namely the communication and community support. Any neutral statement, constructive criticism, or disagreement with the developer's actions will be met with a ban in any of the public forums (Discord, Reddit, Steam). They have a track record of making sweeping changes to core functionality with little to no notice. It seems to me that they select the least consumer friendly option first and then are forced to backtrack due to the overwhelming responses they get from their players. They have broken promises made early in development and have dramatically changed portions of the game that people have already paid for. Balance is neither a goal nor a strength of the game and there will often be weeks or months long periods where broken items will dominate the meta. That being said, I bought in as a founder in early access and have been playing regularly since. I have put hundreds of hours into the game and have been "legend" at every time that was possible. The game has great visual polish, an addicting gameplay loop, infinite replayability and honestly it's just a lot of fun. If you can hold your nose and put up with all of the nonsense that comes from the game developer, the actual product is excellent.

Game had some potential and would have been an easy recommend, but unfortunately Tempo and Reynad have gone above and beyond in all the worst ways possible. Any suggestions or criticism leads to immediate bans on Reddit and Discord. Reynad shares outright lies to try and justify the scummy changes to monetization and screwing over early adopters. They could have been transparent and honest about why they needed to make changes, but instead went with gaslighting and hostility. At this point the only hope I could have for the game would be for Reynad to turn off social media forever and for them to be bought out by a solid publisher. However as it stands, it looks very likely this game will fail and be eventually abandoned due purely to mismanagement.

Edit: since my review they have also brought back the launch bundle. Makes things much more palatable, but shows just how right I am about them being greedy/aggressive/predatory and slowly rolling it back to an acceptable level. Glad to see them slowly making it right, but im banned because someone told his mods/devs to be ban happy this week. I have a couple hundred hours on the Tempo launcher. I really like this game, I think it's possibly the best auto battler out there, but the devs are awful for how they are monetizing it. In less than a year it has changed monetization methods multiple times with the devs trying to push predatory and disgusting monetization onto its community and rolling it back after backlash. I think what they have done with going from free to play to $40 base game with $20 characters is too much for this game. Not to mention the $80 cosmetic micro transactions that they have already removed (rolling back after backlash AGAIN) and the predatory FOMO launch bundle that they clearly hoped would smooth things over with existing players and draw in some new ones, but it really just screws over anyone that wants to play the game beyond today. I imagine it will go free to play on steam again in the near future. I wasn't going to leave a review - I was going to just move on and be one with the game. The devs removed my post discussing the new monetization from their discussions and banned me from the steam hub for "excessive negativity". The devs, especially the lead, have been known for silencing members of their community that speak out against what they are doing, and it has moved onto steam too. The post was insightful, detailed what some of their past "rug pulls" have been, talked about how I am not happy with the current monetization, and touched on the future of the game if something doesn't change. Again since this post they have already pulled back on their cosmetic DLCS, so clearly I was right in some way. I don't believe it was in any way excessive, if anything it was one of the more mild negative posts, and mentioned how much I loved the game and was disappointed in the direction the devs were going for the second time. Disgusting behavior and you truly earned this negative review.

F2P game changes monetization for the 4th time. Now $40 with launch bundle discount and multiple $80 MTX bundles. Cash grab scramble from NFT dev bro. Milking playerbase for a Steam account link for $20. Can't be trusted. Clueless. Balance is always horrible. Pumping out content ignoring balance and QOL. GGs FOMO launch bundle live again after weekend btw. LMAO.

I enjoyed the gameplay, however, having spent $26 on the game (in Canadian) I realized that was just the 'base price' of the game, and that I would have to spend an additional $78 to access all the characters in the game, with no alternative methods of unlocking. I greatly disapprove of this monetization, and wish I had been informed about it before I bought it.

The game went through several iterations of monetization. First it released in paid early access like Path of Exile 2. You got one free ranked ticket a day to win chests that contained both cosmetics and gems. Otherwise, you needed to pay 100 gems to keep playing ranked. Free play offered no chests or rewards. You can spend money to buy gems. Then it released in open beta as a free-to-play game where you can buy new characters with gems. They removed the free ranked ticket a day and introduced a battle pass with daily and weekly missions to progress through it. The battle pass had a free track and a paid track. There was also a subscription model that, when active, earns you double chests in ranked play, double pass XP, and exclusive cosmetics. Free play still offered no chests or rewards, but can contribute towards daily and weekly XP missions. Then it released in 1.0 as a free-to-play game. They course corrected and gave back the free ranked ticket a day, and the battle pass is single track that all players have access to. The subscription remained to earn double chests in ranked play and double battle pass XP. Free play still offered no chests or rewards, but can contribute towards daily and weekly XP missions. And now we're here on Steam release where the game is a paid product. You can no longer buy new characters with gems and must buy them with real money. Ranked play no longer requires tickets and chests can now be earned with free play. The game terminated subscriptions but all players now earn double chests. At its core, the game is fun. It's clear that whomever worked on this game busted their asses off to make it with its visual design, sound effects, character design, lore building, voice acting, and numerous balance passes. It was also clear that, with the open beta and 1.0 iterations, the game was never going to get a penny from players that played the game enough to accrue the gems needed to purchase the new characters. So a decision was made to make The Bazaar a paid product. The base game is now $40 that comes with the original 3 characters, Vanessa, Pygmalien, and Dooley. Mak and Stelle are considered DLC characters that cost $20 each. Reviewing this product as it is now, I'd say it's worth the money, especially when it goes on sale. You can sink in hundreds of hours to create wild builds, commit to ranked play, and collect all the cosmetics. If the argument was that they're trying to take the money and run, they would've done that already and never bothered to release it on Steam. If the game shut down in the next couple of months, it wouldn't take away the hours of fun I had playing it since October 2024, but also I'd just get back to my ever-increasing backlog of other games. IDGAF what the developers says or does on their socials or communities. My "relationship" with this game and any other game I play is transactional: I pay because I think it's fun, and when I'm done, I move on.

Finally, there is a way to review this game without getting banned on Discord & Reddit Got 412Hours in this game. The moderator team bans any criticism of the game immediately, whether on Discord, Reddit, or the Steam forums. Take a look at the second Bazaar Reddit and see what ridiculous statements get you banned. The best example would be that other long *** review the main guy from the company answered too. Guess what. Banned They keep saying that the game was not planned as an NFT game. But it's relatively easy to find a few comments that say the opposite. Could be tinkered with since I didn't see the original post, but I highly doubt that if you want to see em just check out the big review. The mint numbers and limited quantity of items, as well as the planned but canceled player trading market just say otherwise. Within a few months, the monetization was changed four times. From f2p to p2w to better f2p and finally to B2P with prices that are far too high. 80 bucks for a board & music that can also be farmed in-game? Why? Edit2 : They now removed the 80€ Board & Music Dlc. Perfect example. The game itself is an autobattler like TFT, for example. Instead of upgrading units, you collect items for your board that have different effects which are amplified when you find the item a second time. Skills also exist, and you find a lot of them during the round, they improve everything you can do. More dmg , less slowdown , less cooldown and more Overall, I can recommend the game for what it is. It has depth and offers long-lasting fun. But as long as the company doesn't hire a community manager, I don't think the current community will get along with the upper management which will ruin the game sooner or later. Edit: Alot of ppl in the comments asking why i still play the game Or why i gave it a thumbs down. I think its not worth the 40€ pricetag because of the above mentioned issues. The game itself is great but the managment will probably ruin it sooner or later with their below average community managment. Also i got a key from a friend when he bought the beta. I paid about 20€ for the game Read the entire review please Edit3: They now reduced the price to 20€ and will keep it that way. Good change but proves the review right once again

I've been playing this game since closed beta. It's excellent. The company's communication leaves something to be desired, but the game itself is extremely fun. I have not previously played an autobattler; I would compare this game to other turn based (or no-time-limit) strategy roguelikes, like Slay the Spire, Monster Train, Wildfrost, etc. If you like those, you may like this and vice versa.

Still great fun and no kind of Pay2Win no matter what the trolls say

> buy the game > great time, everybody has the same stuff to play with > new characters! > they are paid for > F*** this It's insane to me that i paid for a full game to some time later not having a full game anymore Calling it a DLC when i have to play against people who bought them is bull****

If you're looking for a casual autobattler to dip into every now and then, I wouldn't really recommend The Bazaar. While the game has potential, it suffers from drastic patch-to-patch changes that make it hard to keep up unless you're deeply invested. These updates can be exciting for hardcore players or stream viewers who enjoy dissecting meta shifts, but for the average player, it can feel overwhelming and inconsistent. The frequent changes are great if you have plenty of time to watch streams, read guides, or follow external websites. But if you're just looking for a pick-up-and-play experience, this isn't it. Regarding the monetization, there's been a lot of controversy. Some reviewers ask others to ignore it, claiming it's been fixed. That is only partially true. Yes, the developers made major changes after backlash, including removing the paid season pass and making expansion packs free to earn. However, the game has shifted monetization models multiple times --> from free-to-play to a $45 premium version, with additional heroes costing $20 each. That kind of volatility makes it hard to trust they won’t change things again. Moderation of criticism has also been heavy-handed, so I wouldn’t recommend going to their Discord to voice concerns. There are also design decisions that feel anti-player. For example, you can't fast-forward fights you already know the outcome of. The devs have stated this is intentional, to make the game more spectator-friendly for platforms like YouTube and Twitch... While that might benefit streamers, it’s frustrating for regular players who just want smoother gameplay. Again, their choice, but it’s one that prioritizes streaming optics over user experience. In summary: It’s not for everyone, but I’m sure there’s a dedicated niche out there that genuinely enjoys it. Proceed with caution.

just no,too much random

The premise is great, but in order for it to work, every item needs to be balanced. And this game is anything but balanced. Right now Stelle is wiping the floor with everyone because shes basically invulnarable to slow and freeze and does damage almost instantly. So, Stelle and Dooley rule this months meta.Pyg will still win late encounters. And Vanessa and Mak are absolute trash. Ammo weapons have been nerfed to the ground, as well as Maks potions. Even run of the mill vanessa weapons are almost all F tier. A katana that does 5 damage, a shotgun that does 20, while literally everyone can outheal or outshield it with ease. Balance is trash, it seems they lack insight in this as well as what makes the game fun. Everything that was fun before have been nerfed to death or put behind an overly powerful minion. It's sad, I had great hopes for this game. But in the end it does not promote you going with what u got, but instead it's a snipe for the wepons/tools that are powerful but haven't been nerfed yet. So yeah, people force builds in this game rather then letting the mob drops/shops dictate what u are going with. This is what I dislike the most about this game (also i'm so freaking tired of how slow the first 5 days are the mobs have too much hp , u tool ittle damage so it takes 3 minutes for some stupidmob fight)

Update #1: They have started banning people to appealing/asking for a refund for the price drop on the reddit/discord. I'm telling you, stay far far away from this game if you value your money. (I convinced a friend to get me this game so I could leave a bad review without spending actual money on it)

TL;DR, Don't buy, Shady Developer/s

I have a couple dozen hours spent once you take into account Tempo > Steam, probably roughly 150+. With that being said, these developer/s have burned every bit of trust a lot of the community had in them. The Pros: The game by itself is a ton of fun. All the characters are amazing and fun to play (even if not all of them are fun to play against). While there are some mechanics that can annoy the hell out of you, it's ultimately a fundamentally strong game. - Fun game - Build diversity options - Unique designs (When it doesn't look like AI) The Cons: Basically, they pulled the rug under everyone who was waiting for the steam release. They ended up making a free game cost 40$, and made every character an additional 20????. This alone is already enough to make me not want to support them, but then they also f*cked over the initial beta testers. If you had spent anywhere from the 60-120$ that was required to get into the early beta, you STILL had to pay an additional 40-60$ just to get the game on steam + with stelle. Also if you bought the game back when it was 40$, you havent received any compensation for the 20$ price drop!!!!!! So if you buy it now and they lessen it again (which they fking better), you still wont get anything!!!!! Initially on Tempo Launcher, you could buy EVERYTHING with gems. Those gems were also obtainable by opening chests and, as advertised, eventually could be obtained by selling on the promised "players market" for duplicate skins. Out of nowhere, they pulled the idea COMPLETELY. Now duplicate skins will be converted into gems, and gems are effectively useless. You can't use them in place of ranked tickets to play ranked (tickets are also gone and were converted into gems!!!), you cant use them to buy characters, and you cant use them to buy expansions. It's gross business practice and sketchy from everyone involved. Next, if you wanted to speak OUT about how you thought it was unfair, immediate bans from the reddit and discord. If you made a youtube video about it, mass dislikes. You can't even comment on their steam announcements without them sifting through it and trying to get rid of every last bad rep available to the public. - Sketchy business practice - Screwing over community - Suppressing any opposition - Terrible Price + all characters cost 20$????? - Game is very unstable. You will frequently lose runs to server de-sync because of random crashes. - Very RNG dependent, but that's every roguelike so don't think too much about it. - Sh*tty company Thank you for coming to my ted talk. please don't buy this game unless they drop the price of everything, including characters.

Game is very fun and works well. Monetisation scheme is literally a scam and can be even more scummy later

The scummiest microtransactions I have ever seen and I play League

Can't censor this