During my time at SGF, I stopped by Square Enix to play a few rounds of its upcoming multiplayer shooter Foamstars. I walked away, less than impressed. This sudsy shooter pits two teams against each other in a frantic combat arena where your objective is to soak the other team in your foam and then surf into them to knock them out.
Before the demo, we were given a brief presentation about the different modes and options in the game; there was even mention of a single-player campaign. After being briefed, we were split into teams to play the game mode “Steal the Star.”
Not Even A Soap Gun Can Clean This Mess
The mode requires your team to rack up seven knockouts before making someone on your team the VIP; if the other team eliminates them, they win the match.
Here’s where Foamstars whole identity is supposed to lay itself out, but it ends up being an unreadable mess. Many will compare this game to Splatoon because you’re covering the map in your team’s foam so you can glide across it and traverse the map easier.
However, because the map we played on, a roulette wheel, was a small circle, there was no real time to suds up the field before conflict engaged. The map has no vantage points, chokepoints to hold, or any sort of terrain. You’re meant to create those obstacles with your foam. Shooting an area is supposed to make a high wall to protect a teammate or a ledge to view a better angle of the playing field, but the foam physics just aren’t there, and it ends up being a difficult-to-control frustration rather than an exciting hook.
Because of the lack of angles and small map size, you’re just constantly on top of the enemy and spend all of your time shooting them. This wouldn’t be so bad if the gunfire felt good or had nice feedback. Shotguns felt weak, rifles felt inconsistent, and anything that had travel time was too slow to catch anyone moving around the field.
Other maps seem to have terrain baked into the design, but the map we played had little to none of that.
Each character brings something new to the table, and during my appointment, no one explained how these character abilities worked. This is fine because almost every one of the abilities is presented as a form of soap grenade or turret. These felt like great abilities to accompany a more interesting setup.
One character did launch himself into the air and landed like a cannonball, covering the field in soapy goo. This was by far the most exciting ability the game offered.
Foamstar’s hook of using the foam to lay out chokepoints and labyrinths could be interesting, but it just isn’t there. It’s difficult to control the foam to take the shape you want it to, and if you take too long trying to construct anything, the enemy is in your face gunning you down.
I can’t say I’m particularly interested in seeing where Foamstars goes from here, but there’s still a lot to show off, and maybe this was just a bad demo.
The demo didn’t show off any of the monetizations in the game, but the main menu had a Store option, so it remains to be seen what will be for purchase in the full release.
When asking Square Enix about the monetization on the store page, they said:
“What you saw at Summer Game Fest was a work-in-progress build, and everything seen in this demo is subject to change. We’re excited to share more details about Foamstars in the future.”
We also don’t know if Foamstars is a free-to-play or premium game; Square Enix has not given confirmation about that either. So it remains to be seen if this game will go the way of other premium multiplayer titles or if the rest of the game can lift it up to new heights.
