As previously announced during Sony's recent State of Play livestream, Square Enix's online battler Foamstars is getting an open beta, and it's available now on PS5. You can play the Happy Bath Survival and Smash the Star modes from now until 11:59pm PDT on Sunday, with eight characters up for selection. Your progress won't carry over into the full version, and while there will be a PS4 edition available at launch, this open beta isn't available on Sony's last-gen system.
Smash the Star is team deathmatch while Happy Bath Survival separates the map into inner and outer zones to see who the last team standing is. Anyone who participates in the beta will receive an exclusive skin for Soa in the full game.
A PS Plus membership isn't required to jump in and start spraying foam, so will you be giving the game a go? For some impressions based on our session back at Summer Game Fest, click the link below.
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Everybody wants to trash this game, but, man, this style of game can be a lot of fun if it hits right. I want it to hit right. Really enjoyed Knockout City, love Splatoon, and I’m hoping this is fun along those lines. Downloading now… and I’ll be playing it in 5 minutes…
I love Splatoon (obviously) but I kinda want to give the open beta a try cause why not.
Bold prediction, this will barely last a year. Hyenas didn’t even make it to release, plus I’d put money on Sony’s slate of live service games to be internally pitted against each other to create excuses to slim down. The bubble’s burst, unfortunately enough for Foamstars.
More like Rip-off-Stars....lol
I feel like Nintendo makes the overly simplified version of things, so if this game can expand on what Splatoon offers I can see it succeeding. They should also bring in cameos from their established IPs because those default characters look kind of lame.
The gameplay for this looks fun. I hope that's enough.
Seems like a poor man's Splatoon 2 to me
This is really fun ^__^
@somnambulance Frankly surprised people are rating this game as well as they are, considering is not exactly subtle about its inspirations and the fact the publisher SE hasn’t made very good decisions in the last few years. We’ll see how it all does on launch day.
Is this another one to go down like a cup of cold sick?
Unfortunately hasn't too much to do with Splatoon.
More in a similar vein as Knockout City which was the most fun multiplayer ever. But not quite on same level of polish
By the way, it's always so hilarious when people call something a rip off when there's a 2nd (2 in total) game similar and don't give a f when 99,9% of all other games are the exact same thing 😄
This just doesn't appeal to me in the slightest, but knock yourselves out.
@Kidfried Jump in for the beta. Best case, the people that are nervous for it surviving like it enough to play and keep it alive. Worst case, you don’t like it during the beta and it doesn’t matter to you personally if it survives.
@Blackjay It’s different enough. My wife, as a Splatoon fan, didn’t like it, and not for the reasons you’d expect: she didn’t like it because it wasn’t enough like Splatoon for her! I told her to give it some more time and try it out. For me, I dunno. I need to try it some more. It’s hard competing against Splatoon because, honestly, for me, it might be the best competitive shooter right now. Weird for me to say that, but most of the rest of them have fallen off for me (ie Overwatch, CoD, etc.). Right now, I’d say Foamstars shows promise. It’s more team deathmatch-y than Splatoon. There’s definitely room for teamwork, but Square is perhaps a bit aware that people go off on their own instead of play to team rules, for better or worse, so they incorporated that into one of the game modes. I didn’t notice any jank to it, but it definitely has that free-to-play veneer. The beta may definitely satiate my interest in the title to the point where I’m meh about the full release, but it also may make me more interested in what other game modes there will be. I do think this one has a better shot than many realized at the Sony Showcase (and probably a more likely chance of survival than some of the first party GAAS titles).
Played it last night, it was pretty fun. My only gripe is that the matches are too short.
This one seems fun, shame I can't try it this weekend. The amount of hate it gets is ridiculous. Yes it is similar to Splatoon but that's about it.
@mrbone It's really fun I'm enjoying it a lot this beta has definitely convinced me to get the full game. This just a personal thing but this games aesthetic and character design just appeals to me waaaaaaaaay more than Splatoon as amazing as those games are
Played an hour so far and it's actually quite fun, also funny how on socials people are bashing the game all whilst bigging up splatoon 2, it's pretty obvious this game has enraged the Nintendo die hards just like Genshin Impact did when it was first announced, and yet that's now bigger than Zelda, so fingers crossed this game actually does well and everyone interested ignores the one sided hate.
@UltimateOtaku91 That's just how Nintendo fanboys are anything remotely similar to what Nintendo has done comes out they pee in their diapers and throw their toys out the pram. If everyone had their mentality they'd be no such thing as different genres there'd be no Doom because oh Wolfenstein did it first so you can't make that, no Bayonetta because oh that's just like DMC, no other 2D platformers because Mario Bros etc it's a really shallow minded mentality to have.
Nintendo fans can't stand getting foam on them, they have serious Foam-O! (FOMO)
@BusyOlf But where is this Bulake exactly located?
This plays nothing like Splatoon TBH
Hopefully Square Enix treats this as a traditional online multiplayer game like how things were in the PS3/360 era and not go the live service route.
@Grumblevolcano Considering that they lost billions? Most likely not and are trying to save themselves by making a live service to profit off.
I LOVE Splatoon ever since the first one on Wii U so naturally this caught my attention but having tried this for an hour it’s sadly just a poor attempt at a copy of Splatoon when it actually could’ve been a good one.
The potential is there’s since the artstyle looks interesting and I’d say that gameplay could be fun, however currently it feels so janky and slow to play, half the times I’m trying to do something my character takes seconds to react and someone else ‘foams’ me in the meantime, I tried to play with all characters but it’s the same result, also the maps are quite small and unappealing which results in the same battle dynamics and very few variety in battles.
Sadly I’m thinking this is gonna be yet another live-service game that disappears from existence less than a year after launch.
@Mikey856 that's just..so vile man 🤢
The over saturation of games like this on the market, what are these companies thinking??? those games are time sinkers and they keep coming, some didn't even survive development like Hyenas and Last 2 fractions which got reworked. Honestly indie game studios keeping the industry healthy
Personally for this one to have legs I think it needs to launch on PS+. Then hopefully it'll have the longevity of Fall Guys
@SamMR wait wait wait, like the indie games scene constantly churning out the same reskined metroidvania formula/side scrollers games many with grindy rogue like elements and procedural generation to increase longevity via reused and repetitive content? A very over saturated market as well. Despite a few gems the indie scene has largely become a microcosm of the same stale iterative rut that the rest of the medium is in. They have just cornered a subset that is feasible with their budgets.
Having tried out the beta and looking past some flaws, the game is good in its own right.
The real question is if S-E can actually handle Foamstars well enough in the long run. I...cannot provide a satisfying answer on that.😑🤷♂️
Genuinely sad the Beta is over I was having sooooooooooo much fun I rarely ever play non-single player stuff but I absolutely loved this. Can't wait for the full game hope it does well and Square actually support it (at least long enough for them to make some merch of Soa 😅she's such a cool character). And I've heard there will be a single player campaign in the full game so yeah can't wait to jump back in next year ^__^
@Uromastryx Hyenas certainly went that way 😂
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