Live service games, if they cut through the noise, can bring in more money than almost any other type of game. The problem, of course, is that noise. Developers need to find their niche among the countless multiplayer titles 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 title that makes it, there are countless more that don't. What these live service titles are not called is Splatoon, and here Square Enix seems to have found "their" niche.
Foamstars is essentially a live service version of Nintendo's multiplayer shooter for consoles (PlayStation 4/5) where, of course, the Splatoon series has never set foot. It is perhaps a pitch as good as any, but the question is whether PlayStation gamers are really so hungry for a "Splatoon-like" that they will accept any quality?
Contrary to its obvious (and wonderful) source of inspiration, Foamstars is not about colour, but about - get this - foam. The opening voiceover makes this clear, while explaining that no one dies in Foamstars either. During the course of the game, you absolutely do not kill your opponents. You get "chills", not kills. Cool, right? The colourful, costumed and market-analysed childish tone unfortunately struggles to capture the younger audience right from the start, and the kind of self-distance and irony that, for example, Epic is so good at in Fortnite, has a noticeable absence here.
Anyway, after my three teammates and I have each chosen one of eight characters, the game begins. Smash the Star! We are dropped onto a giant ramp, surf down it and land on one side of a total of three levels. Either a disco arena, a kind of casino, or some kind of mixture of disco and casino arena. Using the characters' various foam weapons - foam shotgun, foam missiles, foam rifles and so on - and their two different special abilities, we try to kill (sorry, "chill") opponents. When the opposing team's players have been "chilled" a total of eight times, one of the players is randomly designated a Foamstar and becomes a little more powerful. When this player is finally chilled, the game is definitively over.
It's messy and cluttered.
However, simply pointing the foam guns at the opposition is not a good idea. If you've ever slipped in the bathtub, you'll know that soap and bath foam are treacherously frictionless, and again, your own foam has the ability to speed up your team's movements - but also vice versa with your opponents by slowing them down. It is therefore important to always try to cover the ground and, in the heat of the moment, constantly press the L2 button to surf forward and navigate as best you can from foam patch to foam patch.
In terms of pace, this is absolutely vital for survival, or perhaps a little too necessary. Because the differences between the surfaces are so great that you either move absolutely sluggishly on neutral ground/enemy foam, or your character flails around like they've been oiled up before being kicked down a water slide. Neither surface is satisfying to move on, and one of Square Enix and Toylogic's first balance fixes going forward should definitely be to shrink the differences between them. In addition, the collision physics with the game's vertical platforms are absolutely horrible. It seems to be entirely up to chance whether I grab a ledge or not, and overall there's never any real flow to my movements. It's miles away from how Fortnite or especially Apex Legends feels.
Unfortunately, there is rarely any flow in the matches themselves either, and structurally it has looked more or less identical in the majority of my hundred clashes. It begins with a slow, minute-long start, followed by a minute-long middle section of surf action, and then an absolutely hellish chaos breaks out at the end where the entire screen flashes with foam, special abilities and various weapons that are virtually impossible to control. What Blizzard has always excelled at in everything from Warcraft and Starcraft to Overwatch has been their knack to design details that make characters and abilities recognisable even in the most crowded situations. In Foamstars, however, after a few minutes into the game, it often feels like I've got bath foam in my eyes. It's worse than the kill streak hell of Call of Duty's worst multiplayer moments.
A foam party I'd rather not attend.
But sometimes there are a few games where things work out. The team manages to wordlessly communicate and coordinate; an ultimate shoots out a powerful energy beam that leaves the entire centre of the level in foam, and we surf forward in a row towards the opposing team, firing shots in rhythmic formation. It ebbs and flows and these pulse-pounding, aggressive advances in overtime make me want to like Foamstars more than perhaps it deserves. Because what PvP title is not fun when you win? The match losses are far more interesting for context and expose one of Foamstars' major problems.
Due to what I assume is the target group's hard focus on casual gameplay, there is no ranked mode, only ranked events that come and go. Therefore, the opposition varies enormously and, on top of that, it's basically impossible to get any kind of feedback on what I can improve after another chaotically hopeless loss. There are no general match statistics available, and after the battles only scarce information about your own performance is shown. Other players' match statistics remain hidden behind misguided GDPR protection unless they happen to be the Most Valuable Player.
However, the lack of feedback and a ranked mode are only parts of the larger problem that is games as a service at its core: sustainability and longevity. I simply don't see how Foamstars can deliver any kind of variety and, by extension, game value when character choices make little significant impact on the games. Something other than more content will be needed to add variety and sustainability here. And I just want to mention that the battle pass is very poor and the shop contains all manner of "premium" purchasable cosmetic stuff from the start, which is harrowing in the context when this is still, in all other respects, aimed at children...
Maybe Square Enix and Toylogic can fix this and polish off the worst flaws with updates, in a typical live service style? Maybe, but I don't think so. The problems are, as I see it, too deeply buried under the bath foam. And it's a shame, anyway, because despite Foamstars looking like an amateur project from Fortnite Creative Mode, I've still had a bunch of fun matches with good friends. The experience has, apart from some connectivity issues in the matchmaking, also been exceptionally stable and bug-free, and the city pop jazz that highlights both matches and menus is always crazy catchy. If you have PlayStation Plus, this is "free" to download, so there is the opportunity to test it if the slightest craving arises. However, I would hardly recommend a purchase or subscription just for this.