How Square Enix thinks Foamstars will survive service games’ collapse
Service games have been dominating the video game landscape for the past decade, spawning from the boom of online gaming and all its connected possibilities.
Something, however, has gone terribly wrong in recent times. The constant influx of multiplayer titles in the genre has led gamers to experience certain fatigue and begin to noticeably restrict the time they invest in it - a key metric for the viability of any game in 2024.
This crowding also meant that developers, often unwillingly pushed to attempt a foray into a genre they didn’t have any familiarity with, lacked original ideas to come up with and even the right expertise to succeed. We talked about this at length in our Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League review.
That said, there are still people who think they can carve out their own niche in this market.
Square Enix has pulled out all the stops to ensure Foamstars has such a chance, starting with mimicking successful mechanics and styles such as Splatoon’s, through to releasing it from day one on PS Plus and an exclusivity deal with PlayStation.
We’ve yet to find out whether it’ll be enough or not, but producer Kosuke Okatani is convinced that Foamstars will have a chance to survive - or even to thrive - in today’s multiplayer gaming landscape.
GLHF: When did you decide to launch the game on day one on PlayStation Plus, and which benefits do you expect PS Plus to bring to Foamstars right away?
Kosuke Okatani: We’ve worked extremely closely with Sony Interactive Entertainment throughout this project, and while I’m unable to say when that decision was made, I will say the decision to launch Foamstars as part of the PS Plus catalog ensures it’s accessible to the entire PlayStation Plus subscriber base, which was an opportunity we couldn’t pass up.
From our perspective, this is a great way to thank the PlayStation community for their ongoing support while also giving the game its chance to shine. Growing a vibrant, active, and engaged Foamstars community is crucial to its success, and we believe the PlayStation Plus approach is the best way to achieve this.
Square Enix
With 2024 expected to be a complicated year for service and multiplayer games, do you think Foamstars has what it takes to build a dedicated fanbase? What do you think makes it unique enough to do so?
Of course! We believe Foamstars provides a very different experience to current team-based shooters. Most titles in this genre are serious, realistic, or mature in design. We have created Foamstars as an over-the-top shooter experience where foam is the weapon of choice. As far as we know, this is the only game to use foam as ammo!
Next, as a multiplayer game, we need to get the game into the hands of lots of players. That’s why we worked with PlayStation to have the game released as part of its PlayStation Plus Monthly Games.
We have also made every effort to make Foamstars a game that all players can get behind as fans for a long time to come. For hardcore players, we have included ranked content, challenges, and other elements that will help players to feel more attached to the characters. For casual players, we’ve included PvE modes and a playable tutorial to ease them into the game.
Lastly, we are planning to roll out free seasonal updates approximately every five weeks. As we devised the content and length of each season, we made sure to think about what’s going to keep players engaged and having fun, so I hope everyone will like what we have in store. We will provide new maps, modes, characters, cosmetics… and I’m sure there will be other surprises along the way!
Square Enix
There are many aspects that differentiate Foamstars from other titles, but I’ll just summarize a few of the main ones.
The mechanics - The foam isn’t just there for shooting competitors, we made sure it was integral to the core gameplay experience. For example, traversal and building are underpinned by the foam. Players can use their slideboards when on the foam to move round the maps faster; however, this only works when they are on their team’s foam. The competitor foam slows them down. As for building, we made sure the foam settles and can be used to create structures and shape the topography. This provides players with numerous ways to be strategic during a match. For example, building walls to provide defensive cover, or making a foam mountain to have a height advantage and take out competitors from above.
The visuals - I believe the visuals are like nothing else in this genre. No other game world offers the experience of seeing a bright, flashy city get engulfed by colorful foam.
I also think the creative and eye-catching characters, designed in collaboration with the talented team at Gurihiru, are a huge aspect of what makes the game visually appealing. We have already seen so much fan art on social media, even since before the game was released, which we are obviously delighted about. That gives us so much motivation as a development team. Thank you to our community!
The vibe - although this is a shooting game, I think that we’ve succeeded in making something that feels like a party, where it’s fun to play whether you win or lose. We received a lot of positive feedback during last year’s open beta about the features that were implemented to make the game feel more party-like, such as being able to fire off words of congratulations to the winners after your character loses a match.
Square Enix
During concept and development stages, did you have any inspiration in terms of other games?
We’re fortunate that our team has a wealth of experience, with avid fans and players of many different games and genres. This meant we had a rich pool of expertise and interests to dig into to help ensure our goal of creating a new gameplay experience became a reality. Personally, I studied the latest games of similar genres or appeal to a similar market to understand which specific aspects stood out and looked at how they could be incorporated into Foamstars.
It’s not actually game-related, but one thing that really inspired me was people’s love for the “foam party”. The main reason our director first came up with the core idea for this game is that he was upset that any time he played any hardcore games in his living room, his wife would get up and leave the room. He felt pretty bad about this, and so decided to make a game that people watching from the sidelines would enjoy and feel included in. While devising the final concept, he hit upon the idea of making a game based on foam, something that is eye-catching, represents fun, and isn’t violent.
At that point, he decided to go to a real-life foam party to check it out, and there he found people young and old, men, women and children, even an elderly lady in a wheelchair, blasting each other with foam and being hit by foam, all with huge smiles on their faces. That was when he had the eureka moment: he would make a game about shooting each other with foam.
He observed that foam floats visibly through the air, settling and piling up wherever it lands. He decided to make this one of the core mechanics of the game. From that point on, the development team would set off bath bombs and blow soap bubbles in the office so we could observe the foam and get ideas about what sort of fun things we could do with it. These ideas would then be incorporated into the game.
Square Enix
Which are the differences between PS4 and PS5 in terms of visuals and performance?
The PS4 version is Full HD and 30 FPS, while the PS5 is 4K at 60 FPS. Cross-saving and cross-play [are] both supported.
Also, the PS5 version has support for the adaptive trigger and haptic feedback features of the DualSense wireless controller, as well as gyroscopic aiming using the controller’s motion sensors.
And as for rumble support, we spent a lot of time making adjustments and looking into the different ways in which we could convey the gentle feeling of foam, while also reducing how much strain is put on the player’s hands, as this tends to be something that dampens the whole experience in shooting games. I can’t wait for players to experience this for themselves.
What kind of support did you receive from PlayStation as an exclusive game? Also: any chance for a PC version to come along the way?
While I can’t go into specifics, I can say we’re close partners with Sony Interactive Entertainment and have worked together throughout Foamstars’ development to ensure it’s a game everyone will love playing. As for a PC version, we’re 100% focused on making Foamstars a success for PlayStation to deliver the best experience for its incredible community.
