Square Enix’s Splatoon-like Foamstars has style, maybe too much of it

Square Enix’s new third-person shooter Foamstars, which pits teams of four players against each other in bubble-slathered battles, appears to be the company’s take on Nintendo’s popular ink-shooter series, Splatoon.

As part of Summer Game Fest, Polygon got hands-on time with the game, and there’s good news: The format of matches introduces an enjoyable twist that leads to an exciting competition. There’s also bad news: Fighting with bubbles doesn’t pack the same punch as gloppy ink — and the gameplay suffers because of it.

The basic premise is FoamstarsIt is simple to learn and easy to jump in. For your team to win the match, they must kill each member of the other team seven times. Once your team gets seven kills, the best player on the other team becomes the “star player,” and you need to kill them to win the game.

Similar to the Splatoon games, you can spray the arena — venues include glittery, Las Vegas-style clubs — with foam of your team’s color and surf smoothly across it. You can shoot bubbles and skill attacks in the same place to create a wall of bubbles. This will give you an elevated vantage point from which to fire (or to be fired). The characters, which are a mixture of cartoon idols and influential figures, each have two skill attacks. For example, pink-pigtailed Soa, can do both a spinning jump in the air and a throwing grenade. The skills of each character are different. For example, Pen Gwyn has a long-range sniping skill while Rave Breaker is able to cover the entire map in foam.

Square Enix

Square Enix

This new match format will be enjoyable to solo players looking for a thrilling match. In the final game, the star player is under the most pressure and has the ability to turn the tide in a dramatic way. My team appeared to be on its way to an easy win after scoring seven skills in a row, but lost the game after the star player of the opposing team managed get away from us. We lost our focus when we chased them.

It was difficult to find a theme that I liked. Foamstar’s visuals when it came to the heat of the battle. I was oblivious of the impact my weapons and bubbles had on me because they bounced around so much. Shooting at close range was easy, while shooting from a distance seemed like it would be impossible. Since the bubbles were piled up, they crowded the screen rather than simply covering the maps. Bubbles would often appear taller and cover my character.

Square Enix

Square Enix

If your character is killed, it will turn into a foamy ball. You can either be killed by your opponent surfing into you, or revived by a teammate. It’s a fun mechanic in theory, but in the chaos of a match, once again caused visual confusion. The down-but-not-out characters that look like balls of foam are hard to pick out amid the visual noise, despite being marked by neon signs that say “chance.” The revive mechanic added yet another element to an otherwise crowded screen and just slowed down the rapid pace of battle. In the end, I ended up leaving behind several people in that foam-ball state because I couldn’t find them.

Foamstars’ frenzied format should still make it a welcome addition to any player who doesn’t have a Nintendo Switch. The fast-paced and unpredictable nature of the matches led to thrilling scenarios, and the game played without any major difficulty or bugs — which was impressive given you have to juggle spraying and navigating foam in quick-turnaround matches. As someone who plays popular shooters such as Splatoon 3. and zero-build Fortnite, I can’t see myself making the switch to FoamstarsSoon. For now, the gameplay is too unwieldy.

FoamstarsPlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 are getting a new game. Square Enix still hasn’t announced the release date.