A sloppy 3 hours with Foamstars

From Foamstars’s first trailer, the Splatoon comparisons were going to be inevitable. Both are colorful shooters with an emphasis on music and style–where spraying the arena is just as important as slaying your opponents. No one has succeeded in doing the Splatoon formula well since its release in 2015 (even attempts have been rare), and since the squid game is a Nintendo exclusive, there is room for more than one of these types of multiplayer experiences. But with the launch of Foamstars a couple days ago, the question still loomed: is this a knockoff or something unique? After three hours I can say it does have its own personality. I’m just not sure it’s the type of personality you would want to spend any time with. 

There are two primary ways to engage with content in Foamstars: Missions and Versus. Missions can be played solo or with a group and primarily act as an extended tutorial. I only played one. It was a slog and I took zero damage. Ultimately, it’s nice that it’s there but most people will be better off jumping straight into multiplayer. If you’ve played a third-person shooter in the last decade and don’t mind taking a couple practice deaths to learn your character’s skills (surprise, they all launch suds in different patterns), you’ll be fine. 

All Versus modes are 4v4 (and you can’t repeat characters, so try to be flexible). I kind of appreciate what they were going for with their character designs. The small cast has slightly more of an identity than mannequins meant to drape overpriced skins on (more on that in a little bit). They can best be described as Overwatch meets The Bouncer with a thick coat of bland. I like looking at them but won’t be ordering any Funko Pops. 

So how are the fundamentals? 

Your bullets are bubbles and, for better and worse, they behave like bubbles. Slow and wobbling. Even though the soap comes in a variety of beautiful pastels (the graphics and performance are strong across the board), the projectile speed paired with thick health bars make even the most intense firefights feel sluggish. In an interesting twist, the suds can accumulate and form small mountains on the battlefield–but this feature rarely played into the outcome of any of my matches. 

Versus currently has three modes (I unlocked two more but they seem to be timed events and not available). Smash the Star is the closest to a standard team deathmatch. Each team has a set number of lives, and after they’ve burned through their stock of continues, the MVP to that point will be elected as the Star Player. The Star Player only has one life while their teammates will respawn endlessly and attempt to defend them. Kill the other team’s Star Player and you win. Despite that convoluted explanation, Smash has the lowest barrier to entry and, so far, my games have consistently been close. It’s easily the most fun I’ve had with Foamstars. 

I only played the second mode, Rubber Duck Party,  once because of how the multiplayer games rotate (similar to how Splatoon rotates maps). Apparently, fate was doing me a favor. It will not be missed. Rubber Duck Party is a tug of war style game where each team guides a single rubber duck DJ through a series of checkpoints. Naturally, everyone flocks to the objective. This leads to chaos–but not the fun kind of chaos where it feels like anything can happen. It’s more the “I guess I’m dead again” style of chaos. Duck this one–it’s five minutes of molasses paced misery. 

The final mode currently available is Happy Bath Survival. You’re still in teams of four, however, the game further splits these teams into pairs. One pair fights on the ground floor while the other watches from the rafters. Their goal is to harass the other team by foaming the map. It sounds interesting, but in reality it’s Smash the Star with only two players having fun at a time. In one match, the opponent I was sharing a chandelier with gave up halfway. I assume they took a bathroom break while they waited for their turn. 

The script, from the story to postgame barks, is odd. It probably seems excessive to pick on the writing of an online multiplayer game, but it really is noticeably strange. It’s a lot of repeating the character names in almost every line and the replies don’t quite match what was previously said. The stilted performances by the voice cast do it no favors. If we later discover the script was written by AI it will be the least surprising gaming scandal of the year. (The album covers were designed by AI, and yes, they look like shit and don’t match the vibe of the rest of the production). 

The combat arenas lack identity–some are shiny, some are neon, and some are both. The lone standout is a giant roulette wheel complete with a ball that blocks off certain routes as the match progresses. I’d expect no less from Bath Vegas. 

I think I like the soundtrack but I’ll wait to form a proper opinion until I’ve listened to it more. I plan to seek it out on another platform–one where I don’t have to continue to play the game. 

There’s a premium season pass (because of course there is) and a shop to purchase cosmetics. There’s no fake currency or “gems” to soften the blow when you see the price of these things. While skimming the catalog, I found one outfit that cost 45 American dollars. For that price, I’d rather buy 15 copies of Super Kiwi 64 (review coming soon). 

In the three hours I played, I unlocked half of the 12 trophies (no platinum). This will not be a dealbreaker for most people, but anyone who downloads Foamstars will be looking for any excuse to come back–any sense of satisfying progression to hold on to. There’s just not much here (the level cap appears to be 25). Will it even be possible to find a match in May? That might seem unfair to the people who made it (this amount of polish makes me believe, perhaps naively, that this wasn’t meant to be a cash grab), but the market can only sustain a handful of these service games at one time. Foamstars might be the first multiplayer experience of 2024 that’s dead on arrival. Ironically, it’s not that different from taking a bubble bath. It’s fun for a little bit, but then the water cools and it all ends up down the drain.