Foamstars
Is this family-friendly third-person shooter destined to make a splash… or will it have you foaming at the mouth?
You only have to look at Fortnite and Call of Duty for evidence of how popular shooters are these days. But if you’re turned off by killing, this team-based arena shooter replaces bullets with, you guessed it, coloured foam.
Foamed-up opponents aren’t immediately knocked out until you slide-kick into them (you can also do the same to rescue a stricken teammate), but your foam doesn’t just deal damage –it can also be sprayed on the ground to allow you to surf around the map more quickly, while also slowing down enemies. Fire it in one spot and it’ll even build up to form a makeshift barricade or lookout point.
The big problem is that all this shooting just doesn’t feel very impactful –a problem when the game modes lean towards knocking out other players. There are at least some twists on the basic deathmatch concept, including ‘Smash the Star’, which culminates in having to protect your team’s best-performing player from being eliminated, and a mode that sees you competing to get a giant rubber duck over to the opposing team’s side. There’s also a single-player option, but this is little more than a character tutorial involving a series of dull wave-based challenges.
Foamstars does offer plenty of emote stamps and pose animations, meaning you can communicate with other players without reliance of voice chat (which often runs the risk of getting very toxic in this genre); but the strongest characters and coolest customisation options are only unlocked by coughing up relatively hefty amounts of real cash. We’re talking £9 or more for a single skin.
Any live service game can evolve and improve over time, so of course there’s a roadmap of new modes, maps and characters that will expand the rather sparse offering at launch. But in the competitive world of online shooters, this one doesn’t give you much to stick around for.
Alan Wen
It’s only foam, so nobody dies in this game… which might not be entirely a good thing.
“Have a nice bubble-bath, they said. You’ll feel much more relaxed, they said.”
STUFF SAYS Bland style, dodgy mechanics, poor solo play, dreadful monetisation ★★✩✩✩