Foamstars (PS5)

In a multiplayer shooter, the shape of the maps you play on can play a bigger role in making the game enjoyable than even the weapons. If you were just thrown in a big empty space, guns that thrive on being able to take cover to reload or find good perches to fire from would lose out to the quick efficiency of a fast and far-firing gun. Foamstars does have a range of unique maps, but the weapons and the maps get along in a very interesting way, because rather than trying to kill each other with bullets, you’re utilizing foam to not just take down opponents, but also build the battlefield.

 

The hero shooter Foamstars is all about that colored foam that comes out of your weapons. As you fire, any shots that make contact with the ground will start building up a layer of foam, and since your shots are often about as big as your own body, you can expect the ground to become coated in bubbles fairly quickly. During the fight, more and more foam can pile up, flat ground turning into walls, hills, and all sorts of bumpy terrain. The goal will still primarily be to take down other players, the player needing to coat them in foam so they can then hop aboard a surfboard and “chill” them in the game’s family-friendly version of eliminations, and since Foamstars is a team game, the foam you place isn’t just new terrain. On your own foam that surfboard you carry with you will let you move at much higher speeds, but on enemy foam you’ll move much more slowly. Your health is reduced by being covered in enemy foam as well, and you need some time in a safe space for it to fall away, but if you do get all foamed up, your teammates can hit you with their boards instead to free you and get you back in the fight.

 

The basics of this system sound like a good fit, and needing to actually move in and claim a “chill” to prevent the enemy’s allies from freeing them encourages not fighting from too far a distance when otherwise many of the foam guns have a pretty good range. However, the two teams having conflicting foam does mean the battlefield’s shape is shifting even more than you’d expect. One team’s foam will start to wear away any placed by the other before finally starting to build up itself, and while this means you see the battlefield become more or less conducive to your team traveling based on the time you spend spraying foam for territory control purposes, that impermanence means foam doesn’t often get the chance to build up into interesting structures. Character abilities at least can instantly place down large walls or reshape an area and they need time to recharge to keep them from being too useful in laying down swathes of colored suds, but the abilities also run into an issue Foamstars has with visibility.

With foam being piled high, it would be easy to lose track of the opposition if not for the game deciding to give outlines, health bars, or markers to players so they’re visible on the other side of the foam. This weakens the foam’s ability to be used as cover, but then you throw in character abilities and things get even more reliant on those indicators. As mentioned, some character already fire big foam blasts as large as they are just as their default rapid shot, but then you have characters firing sprays of big circular shots, big explosive blasts, and even Bubble Beasties that spread foam as they move. Firing at the hints of where other players are as waves of weird foam attacks block most view of the actual characters is a common form full team fights can take, and while you can find times where the one-on-one conflicts are more personal, it can sometimes be difficult to even tell where the specific danger that does you in came from. If not for seeing the enemy life bar deplete, it can also feel like your own attacks are just another part of the chaotic mess.

 

Despite the visual messiness, the actual stages of Foamstars are often built in a way that allows for you to occasionally see past the chaos because of built-in ramps, high ground accessed through boost jumps, and decent shifts in elevation that mean even the more open ground can dip or rise in elevation. In fact, the maps of Foamstars are mostly a pretty flashy and impressive bunch that play well into the game’s odd but amusing setting of Bath Vegas. Foamsmash is actually the name of the sport that the Foamstars are playing for the chance to earn a big cash reward, Bath Vegas built heavily around its play and indulgent in how the mysterious Mr. Vegas has had its arenas designed. A giant roulette table, a flashy circus, an enormous water park, the glittering night sights of Vegas aren’t there to directly impact the area design in terms of added dangers but they do lead to interesting area shapes good for the foam build-up and multiple vantage points that try to keep the clutter from getting out of control. The music gives the action more character as well. It can be funky, jazzy, or more pop-flavored or hip hop inspired, but it all feels either rather chill or quite bubbly which can suit the extremes of battle or the lounging around waiting for the next match to start.

 

In fact, when it comes to presentation, Foamstars gets a lot right outside of the actual vital visuals in combat. The game puts forth the young and popular Soa and ΔGITO (pronounced Agito) as perhaps the main characters for new players to see, but their simple but cool idol and pro gamer background makes them feel a bit generic in a rather eccentric bunch of personalities. Mel T is a energetic girl covered in ice cream accessories who also is the CEO of a legitimate ice cream company. Rave Breaker is a rebellious sort dressed like he adores poison but actually aims to decontaminate the world, specifically the wasteful extravagance of Bath Vegas’s party-going nightlife. The Baristador is a posh and composed gentleman, but even he makes sure his Superstar Skill attack where a big burst of foam is fired like a satellite laser makes a nice heart that imitates latte art. But in this game where one of the characters is an actual sheep, perhaps the highlight is Penny Gwyn, a masked fighter whose weapon even imitates an assault rifle in design and she takes everything far too seriously. She ends up so fascinating though because in the game’s single player FOAMSTAR Missions, you learn this game’s most serious character is from Antarctica, was raised by penguins, and taught the ways of battle by a photorealistic seal named Master Otary.

There is an incredibly amount of whimsy baked into the lore of Foamstars and its over the top characters, and the FOAMSTAR Missions actually seem to be more about letting you get to know them than experiencing a legitimate challenge. FOAMSTAR Missions see you playing as a few of the characters across a set of mostly similar but personalized challenges where instead of facing other players, those Bubble Beasties mentioned earlier are now the target for combat. The sheep named Dark Ramzey has turned the Bubble Beasties against humanity for reasons that vary across each character-specific story, but the goal of these monsters that usually provide the foam power to people is to take out the Bubble Cores that power technology in the area. A broken Bubble Core will cause the nearby area to be absolutely buried beneath foam should it blow, but it would be very impressive for it to happen during the FOAMSTAR Missions because the game barely tries to be difficult during them. Even though you’re on the own, the enemies come in spread out waves and aren’t very aggressive, the final showdown with Dark Ramzey a bit tougher but still not likely to make you lose… unless you’re a child. In fact, Foamstars sometimes feels like it’s designed for a surprisingly young audience even though its online matches would probably be very frustrating to participate in due to the issues with clarity. During the FOAMSTAR Missions as you hear the characters talk and reveal more about themselves though, a good deal of the humor feels like it’s aiming for very young kids, and even in the lobby between matches you might hear a bit of radio chatter where the genius inventor Tonix talks with a kid about devices to alter burps and farts or hear Rave Breaker making petty plans like stealing the breading from fried chicken. Gwyn’s penguin background is amusing because it’s played so seriously, but that cleverness doesn’t come up as often with the often pretty plain humor found elsewhere.

 

Foamstars does at least offer Squad Missions though that up the difficulty, the Normal mode surmountable on your own or with another player but Hard mode with its more unique waves and even special bosses is going to make a full team of seasoned players work for that win. Playing the incredibly easy FOAMSTAR Missions will get you points for upgrades in the Squad Mode though, making them feel like a job despite fleshing out this world a bit more. One interesting touch in the cooperative mode though is being able to pick from a set of three upgrades between each wave of Bubble Beasties, the player sometimes able to make some impressive set-ups that make the foam fighting feel quite different. The competitive multiplayer matches do come in a range of modes as well. The main battle type is Smash the Star, where two teams of four try to eliminate each other for a time. While you will respawn after getting chilled, once your team has had members taken out 7 times, a player will be designated the Star Player and given a huge health boost. If a team eliminates the Star Player, the match is over and they’ve won. The game is usually smart about picking the Star Player, designating someone who was doing well for the team already, and while you might have one that doesn’t play well under that pressure, usually it does lead to a shift in the team dynamics where players can work together to defend that player while the opposing team starts focusing their aggression and in turn more direct engagements occur.

 

Rubber Duck Party is good at focusing player attention in the same space as well, a large parade float with a big duck working a turnatable on it being the main focus. Get on board for a bit and you will claim it for your team, it beginning to move down a path to earn points the further it goes. The duck can be taken from your control and start moving in the opposite direction, and if a player can safely dance atop it, it can even burst forward to cover ground more quickly, meaning there’s a point on the map everyone should be focusing on and leading to heated fights for control. Jackpot Scramble has coins appear in specific locations as well to draw people together, ending in a giant champagne bottle a team who has earned enough cash needs to shake unopposed to claim victory. These modes are mostly good for ensuring lively battles even if they can snowball heavily, but the last mode Happy Bath Survival feels like a pure miss. The two teams of four are further split up in this, a team having two player battling down in a tiny arena as two other teammates are on a cloud above meant to help them with air support exclusively. The small arenas and shift in battle design make it feel even more difficult for players to make sense of where danger is coming from, the problem that makes other modes a bit weaker than they should be exacerbated by having four players high up where the players below can’t really keep track of their influence.

 

At the time of writing, Foamstars has also made unlocking characters much easier than similar free to play games, although that’s more a sign of its lack of popularity as they try to use generosity to ease the game’s decline after releasing a final update. You can unlock every character in 125 matches, although since wins count for double, you can see the entire roster in the time it would take to gradually experience each one and the different modes. Character outfits and weapon skins are still tied to other systems like real money purchases or gradual rewards for playing, but the characters are where most of the unique skills come from so if you want to play as the guy with the foam minigun or someone with homing shots (that are balanced out by being slow to fire and needing frequent reloads), you aren’t going to be barred from doing so for too long. There are advantages to be gained from more random features though, such as weapon altering effects that can make a gun stronger but slower for example, and there are also the bubble gems you need to spend a slowly earned currency to roll for perks you just have to hope are good. Some of these perks are things like healing when you hit the opponent or erase their foam while others make you jump a little higher, so there are some there to foil the chance of receiving more useful perks, but generally you can’t tell too much during a fight if people have such gems and most abilities or moments of sustained fire are going to do their job equally well because of the general damage numbers.

THE VERDICT: The art and music team create a fun and delightfully weird foam-focused world in Foamstars, but the action can’t back that imagination up with thrills so easily. The range of weapons and abilities do make for an ever-shifting battlefield with some unique encounters, but more often you’re trying to target an outline because the foam hinders vision when piled up high or just being fired constantly. Area design and modes do help focus things and prevent it from being constant unreadable chaos, but areas like the single-player missions that could have bolstered things are instead so easy you begin to wonder if the creators though their frantic game would appeal most to children despite skill being necessary to fight effectively through the messy clusters of attacks.

 

And so, I give Foamstars for PlayStation 5…

An OKAY rating. It’s sad to see so much creativity spent on Foamstars when all of it is blocked from view by the focus on foamy combat. Coating battlefields in suds isn’t a doomed idea, it’s mostly an evolution on the territory control focus of Splatoon where painting the ground is the idea and fighting is secondary, but Foamstars discovers that letting the bubbles pile high and be fired in such huge gobs means a combat focus runs into issues of clarity. Deeper tactical decisions can’t be made when your visual information is limited so often, abilities often being fired about in such a frenzy because it has some chance of piercing through it all only to make it even worse. The ability cooldowns do keep it from being constant chaos and there’s definitely a lot of thought put into other ways the game can try to break things up so it’s not always a mess of foamy attacks going off, but the battle modes that try to make for electric team fights run into that issue inevitably. There are many fun character concepts that cater to a range of players, only the two headliners feeling like they’re maybe too safe which inevitably hides Foamstars’s more curious and compelling personalities from the spotlight. A place like Bath Vegas and the strange Bubble Beasties had a lot of room to grow, but then the mission modes are too soft with players outside the very hardest way to play them. A strong single-player component could have given the game a bigger draw and one that lasts even if multiplayer lost the players needed for consistent match finding, but a rework of the foam system feels necessary to help battles feel more personal. It’s a team game where the end of match stats can be a surprise, that sometimes the first time you really realize how well someone was doing in the foamy fog of conflict.

 

While often accused of being a Splatoon rip-off, it’s not bad for a game to try and iterate on an idea and see if they can add a new mechanic to make it more compelling. However, the foam of Foamstars isn’t as focused on territory control, so whether you’re firing bubbly dual pistols, a foam hose, or setting up little robots to do the sud soaking for you, it’s all about taking out players here and that’s hindered more by the foam on the ground than enhanced. Enough neat abilities like mines in the foam or diving beneath it to escape show there was room for it to be explored better, but you almost end up wondering if the foam should be player agnostic and just be a feature that gradually builds up over the fight as either something more permanent or something that must be broken down more deliberately. The idea definitely needed more consideration, and while the gameplay team was trying to find how to put it together, the art teams were producing some interesting ideas that are unfortunately going to known by few since they’re attached to a shaky albeit occasionally effective shooting game format.