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With almost no fanfare, the bubble blood bath began last week when FOAMSTARS silently joined the PS+ Library for February 2024, making its debut in the cutthroat online multiplayer arena shooter live-service gaming world, exclusively within the PlayStation ecosystem. It almost feels like the game was sent out to die by SQUARE ENIX. Regardless of how the game came to be, there's still potential for a game to deliver, but is FOAMSTARS more of a bomb or a bust? In this FOAMSTARS review, we find out.
FOAMSTARS Review: What is FOAMSTARS?
FOAMSTARS is an online multiplayer 4v4 arena shooter that came out on the PlayStation Plus service on February 6, 2024, with the game launching for free and later coming out as a paid game for $30 once it revolves out of PlayStation Plus. The game is available on both PS4 and PS5. The game was developed by Toylogic and published by Square Enix.
FOAMSTARS has two main game modes: the online multiplayer versus and the online-optional missions mode. The online multiplayer versus mode pitches two teams of four against each other in a chaotic bubble bath battle with different rules depending on the match type. Meanwhile, the mission mode lets players do it solo or with a team of four players in co-op multiplayer in a wave-based horde-type tower-defense mode. Mission mode has an overarching story that loosely ties all characters to each other, while also telling their individual stories in an effort to familiarize and endear the characters to the player.
Players take control of one of eight different characters, individuals who can secrete foam from their bodies while using specialized weapons that are designed to funnel their foam and control its secretion better. Each character has its abilities and traits, leading to a different experience and feel for each character.
FOAMSTARS Story
In FOAMSTARS, characters who were born with the ability to produce foam using their skin join a competition for fame and money. Meanwhile, a parallel story where creatures called bubble beasties – creatures that can only be damaged by foam weapons and are out to destroy the world's power cores that produce the energy for the world. The competition's participants are then tasked to help defend these power cores from these strange creatures.
FOAMSTARS' story is so basic it feels like they were written just so that the game has an excuse to have a story mode. The premise by itself is good enough – the world has this enormous competitive show with the players participating in it, called the FOAMSMASH Tournament. However, FOAMSTARS lacks commitment to its premise, as its entire story mode has nothing to do with the FOAMSMASH competition at all.
While seemingly benign at first, these two completely different directions taken for the game's story and premise are symptomatic of a larger problem for FOAMSTARS: it lacks direction. Its foundations are laid out for two completely different paths, a single-player experience that ended up feeling half-baked and a multiplayer experience that gets old fast because of a lack of game modes. Perhaps future content updates can fix this, but as you will find later on, I don't feel so optimistic about this game's future, so those updates might never arrive either.
FOAMSTARS Gameplay
FOAMSTARS gameplay is easy to grasp but requires a lot of patience and understanding to learn and get used to. As opposed to regular shooters, since players shoot foam, gravity plays a large part in the player's aim. Players have to consider the arc and angle of their shots to make sure it hits the enemy. It is frustrating at first, but give it enough time and get used to its systems, and you'll find a fun and enjoyable game. You'd be surprised how tactical the game could get with everything you can do with the foam you spread across the arena.
In FOAMSTARS, the foam you produce can stack and form piles of foam that you can climb and slide across using a surfboard. The foam your enemy produces will eliminate the existing foam on the field, and getting covered by enemy foam will cause you to be “chilled,” this game's version of getting eliminated. As you get covered in foam, you get wrapped into a snowball-shaped foam that lets the enemy players kick you with their surfboard to eliminate you from the game. Your teammates can likewise kick you with their surfboard to save you from getting eliminated. You get to move faster while walking on your team's foam, while the enemy foam slows you down. If you've played Splatoon, you get the idea.
However, unlike Splatoon, FOAMSTARS is still pretty much focused on eliminating enemies. This isn't your zone coverage tug-of-war game. The foam you accumulate and cover the stage with is only the tool for you to take down your opponents. The game features zany weapons and gadgets for each one of its characters, and each one is capable of unleashing a superpowered move that can turn the tide of the match in an instant. These weapons and gadgets vary in terms of damage, range, and amount of foam produced, so each character naturally falls under a certain archetype on what role they're supposed to play in your team.
Finding out what your role is in this game is vital to your overall enjoyment, and it's easy to see how many other players get frustrated about not being able to keep up with other players because they are trying to do duels with a character that is supposed to be focused on laying foam on the ground. The game doesn't help a lot in communicating to players what the character is supposed to do for the team. I believe that the Missions are there to help players ease up and get familiar with the character's abilities and provide players with a space to experiment with how their gadgets work, but some roles could still totally go over players' heads, especially when the Missions have a singular objective: wipe out the waves of enemies coming at you.
FOAMSTARS has a solid foundation for a fun game but sadly the developers didn't hit the landing. Perhaps that's what you get when you're trying to accommodate both single-player and multiplayer experiences with equal focus, and while that's an admirable effort, it's only as good as your worse game mode. And in FOAMSTARS, both the single-player and multiplayer experiences feel half-baked that it feels like the game needs more time in the proverbial oven.
FOAMSTARS Graphics
FOAMSTARS' presentation can be described as either tacky or charming, depending on your taste, but it does have a very loud and eccentric style. The art style itself isn't bad, with good-looking models for generic-feeling characters. The weapon designs and environmental design are nothing to write home about, with arenas that aren't memorable. Save for Soa and Tonix, I find the character designs to be dull and uninspired.
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It's also a missed opportunity for a game to have this nice-looking art style and not to make use of it in animated cutscenes. The game's story beats happen mostly with static images showing up on screen and the characters talking in expository dialogue. It would have been nice to watch these stories unfold in cutscenes, but instead, we get the laziest form of storytelling possible. The images look good, but that's all they are – images.
The game's UI design is nice, though. I've seen complaints online on how foam makes it hard to see things and make out what's happening, and that it's hard to know what's happening because of all the chaos. However, in my experience, it's easy to tell where the enemies are and where your allies are, even when they're behind obstacles or are covered in piles of foam. The game helpfully outlines characters when they are hidden behind foam, making them easier to see, and characters and their foams are either one of two composite colors, making them easy to differentiate.
As for the in-game cosmetics, they don't feel varied or unique enough to warrant costing as much money as they do now. The costumes are basic and don't feel special at all, and I get the bad feeling that these costumes and skins were only made so that the publisher has something to sell as part of its battle pass.
Overall, the game's art direction reflects the confused identity of FOAMSTARS. It doesn't know whether it wants to be upbeat or relaxed. It doesn't know whether it wants to be casual or competitive. Bath Vegas has the potential to be a memorable place, but the developers fumbled in the presentation. The game's identity crisis is very pronounced in the conflicting tones of the game's presentation – with bright lights but cozy designs, with all the energy of a caffeinated stoner.
FOAMSTARS Music and Sound Design
Here's the catch with FOAMSTARS' music: I remember enjoying the music and I was vibing with it while I was playing, but it was also forgettable and I struggle to remember what they sound like now. I do remember that the game had upbeat electronic music and that it gets you hyped up for the matches. The game also features relaxing music while in the lobby, which is also nice to listen to while customizing your characters.
As far as sound design goes, I like the sound of the foam spitting out of the guns, and the sound of the surfboards sliding on foam. However, I feel like the game lacks a certain “oomph” when it comes to eliminations. Even rolling around when you get foamed up yourself doesn't feel impactful because the sound doesn't sound impactful enough. Again, the game sometimes feels too mellow in moments where it's supposed to have more spunk to it. FOAMSTARS' identity crisis bleeds even in the game's sound, and it hurts the overall package.
Verdict: Is FOAMSTARS Good? Is it worth your time and money?
I found the gameplay of FOAMSTARS to be enjoyable and addicting, although the currently available match types and game modes get old fast. I'm sure many of the other players feel the same way, because less than a week since the game's release, it's already difficult to find people to play with aside from the game's primary matchmaking game mode. You can only replay the single-player missions so much to entertain yourself, and even those missions are repetitive. If only the game launched with more things to do, then it would have been a passable product.
Getting this game on PlayStation Plus is a good first step, but SQUARE ENIX is immediately already headed in the wrong direction. Charging people for $30 starting in March is a bad idea, especially if your install base is very small already in the first place. Launching a live-service multiplayer game on a single platform nowadays is a poor way to build a community, and it's hard to imagine FOAMSTARS surviving a full year before the publishers pull the plug. Sadly, the publishers have a poor track record with their live service games, making it hard for me to recommend this game for purchase.
And don't get me started with the outrageous prices they have for the cosmetics and the microtransactions in this game – it's daylight robbery, considering how I already said in an earlier section that the skins aren't well-designed in the first place, anyway. Not to mention that the publisher has already set a precedent in locking a character behind the battle pass – which could mean that future characters will likewise be gated behind microtransactions.
To be clear, I do think FOAMSTARS is worth paying money for the base game, but the ecosystem it's being sold in is a bad place. It's like asking me to buy pumpkin soup in a desert. I enjoy pumpkin soup, but I won't recommend consuming it surrounded by sand under the scorching earth. No amount of foam will sanitize this game from the dirt of its microtransactions, and the suds only make me thirsty for something FOAMSTARS isn't ready to quench.
Score: 6/10
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