Yes, there is a way to debug tridion templates locally.
@Rob has provided wonderful facility to debug templates locally without connecting to remote TcmTemplateDebugHost.exe
What is TcmDebugger?
TcmDebugger is a .NET console application which runs the SDL Tridion Content Manager render/publishing engine in a local context.
This allows a developer to extensively debug .NET templates, .NET custom functionsources and .NET custom mediators on their local workstation.
SDL Tridion Content Manager .NET Templating Debugger
With this TCMDebugger, we can test the template in both engine types that is Debug and Render engines