Live service games, if they cut out the noise, can bring in more money than almost any other type of game. The problem, of course, is the noise. Developers need to find their niche among the myriad of multiplayer games on the market that are constantly vying for players’ attention. If a game isn’t called Fortnite, Roblox, Destiny 2, or The Division 2, they might be called Diablo IV or League of Legends, and for every game that makes it, there are countless games that aren’t called it. What these live service titles aren’t called is Splatoon, and it’s here that Square Enix seems to have found “their” niche.
Foamstars is essentially a live-service version of Nintendo’s console multiplayer shooter (PlayStation 4/5), which of course, the Splatoon series has never ventured into. That’s probably as good a pitch as any, but the question is are PlayStation gamers really so hungry for “Splatoon-like” that they’ll accept any quality?
Contrary to its obvious (and wonderful) source of inspiration, Foamstars isn’t about color, it’s about – get this – foam. The opening voiceover makes this clear, while explaining that no one dies in Foamstars either. During the game, you will never kill your opponent. What you get is “chills,” not killing. Cool, right? Unfortunately, the childish tone of colour, costumes and market analysis struggled to appeal to younger audiences from the start, and the kind of self-distancing and irony that Epic does so well in Fortnite, for example, is conspicuously absent here.
Anyway, after my three teammates and I each selected one of eight characters, the game began. Smash the Star! We were thrown onto a giant ramp, surfed down the ramp, and landed on the side of a total of three levels. Either a disco arena, a casino, or some hybrid of a disco and casino arena. Using the characters’ various foam weapons – foam shotguns, foam missiles, foam rifles, etc. – as well as their two different special abilities, we tried to kill (sorry, “chill”) our opponents. When the opposing players are “cooled down” a total of eight times, one of the players is randomly designated as a bubble star and becomes a little more powerful. When the player finally calms down, the game is completely over.
it’s messy and messy
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However, simply pointing a foam gun at the opposition is not a good idea. If you’ve ever slipped in a bathtub, you know that soap and bath foam are dangerously frictionless, and that your own foam has the ability to speed up your group’s movements—and vice versa, by slowing them down. Deal with your opponents. So it’s important to always try to cover ground and, in the heat of the moment, keep pressing the L2 button to surf forward and navigate from one foam patch to another as much as possible.
In terms of speed, this is absolutely critical to survival, or maybe a little too necessary. Because the difference between surfaces is so vast that you’re either moving absolutely slowly over neutral ground/foam of enemies, or your character is flailing around like he’s been greased before being kicked down a water slide. Neither surface is satisfactory going forward, and one of Square Enix and Toylogic’s first balance fixes going forward will surely be to close the differences between them. Additionally, the collision physics with the game’s vertical platforms are absolutely terrible. Whether or not I grabbed the ledge seemed to depend entirely on luck, and overall there was never any real flow to my movements. It’s a far cry from the feel of Fortnite or especially Apex Legends.
Unfortunately, there’s also rarely any flow to the game itself, which, structurally speaking, has looked more or less the same in my hundred clashes. It starts with a slow, minute-long start, then a minute-long middle section of surf action, and then explodes into absolute hellish chaos at the end, with the entire screen flashing with bubbles, special abilities, and all kinds of almost Uncontrollable weapons. What Blizzard has always excelled at in everything from Warcraft and Starcraft to Overwatch is their knack for designing details that make characters and abilities recognizable in even the most crowded situations. However, in Foamstars, I often felt like I had bath foam in my eyes just minutes into the game. This is worse than the killstreak hell of Call of Duty’s worst multiplayer moment.
A foam party I’d rather not attend.
But sometimes a few games will do the trick. The team managed to communicate and coordinate wordlessly; the ult fired a beam of energy so powerful that the entire center of the level was in a bubble, and we lined up and charged forward toward the opposing team, shooting in rhythmic formation. It has its ups and downs, these heart-pounding, overtime positive developments that make me want to like Foamstars, maybe more than it deserves. Because what PvP title isn’t fun when you’re winning? The match loss is more interesting for context and exposes one of Foamstars’ main problems.
Since I think the target group is very casual gameplay focused, there is no ranked mode, just ranked events that come and go. As a result, the backlash varied widely, and on top of that, it was essentially impossible to get any feedback on how I could improve after another chaotic, hopeless loss. There are no general match statistics available, and only sparse information about your own performance is shown after the battle. Other players’ match statistics remain hidden under misleading GDPR protections, unless they happen to be the MVP.
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However, the lack of feedback and ranked models is only part of a larger issue at the heart of games as a service: sustainability and longevity. I simply don’t see how Foamstars offers any kind of variety and therefore gameplay value when character choices have almost no significant impact on the game. In addition to more content, something else is needed to increase diversity and sustainability here. I just want to mention that the battle pass is very poor and the store contains a variety of “premium” purchasable cosmetics from the start, which is painful in the context of everything else still being aimed at children…
Maybe Square Enix and Toylogic can fix this and, in typical just-in-service style, iron out the worst flaws with updates? Maybe, but I don’t think so. It seems to me that the problem is buried too deep under the bath foam. Regardless, it’s a shame, because even though Foamstars looks like a side project of Fortnite Creative Mode, I still had a bunch of fun matches with good friends. Aside from some connectivity issues in matchmaking, the experience is also very stable and bug-free, and the urban pop jazz that highlights matches and features is always very catchy. If you have PlayStation Plus, you can download it “for free,” so you’ll have a chance to test it out if you get the slightest craving. However, I would hardly recommend buying or subscribing for this.
