Yes, there is a way to debug tridion templates locally.
@Rob has provided a wonderful facility called the "TcmDebugger" which enables the ability to debug templates locally without connecting to a 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 three engine types that is Debug, Debug Engine Server and Render engines