Foamstars interview – Square Enix on creating fun with foam
With Foamstars now finally available on PS4 and PS5, we spoke to its game director and lead producer about what they think sets its suds-soaked hero shooter apart.
The hero shooter space is a crowded one these days. The likes of Fortnite, Apex Legends, and Overwatch 2 have firmly cemented their place by continually dominating the scene, which must make it intimidating for any studio to want to create their own take. However, one outfit that saw a gap in the market to do something different (and foamier) is Square Enix, a fabled publisher most known for the Final Fantasy series, which this week launched its suds-filled third-person shooter Foamstars on PS4 and PS5 straight into the PS Plus Essential February 2024 lineup on day one.
Comparisons to Nintendo’s Splatoon series have come thick and fast ever since the shooter was first revealed in May of last year. With Foamstars now out and in people’s hands, though, the hope from Square Enix is that people see that there’s more to the soapy PlayStation exclusive than just colourful ammunition and a cheerful tone. To learn more about how Square Enix created its joy-fuelled live service shooter, we spoke to game director Chikara ‘Rickey’ Saito and lead producer Kosuke Okatani.
News of Foamstars coming to PS Plus Essential made a big splash, and both team members agreed it was the ideal route to give the game the best possible chance at success. “It was really a no-brainer to be released day one as a PlayStation Plus monthly title,” says Okatani. Helping this move was Square Enix’s tight relationship with PlayStation as a platform, no doubt, that has seen the likes of Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Final Fantasy 16 remain console exclusives. “We have this partnership with SIE, and through discussions with them we talked about how to get the game into as many hands as possible”. The ultimate goal being to “build a community around the game”.
PlayStation nor Square Enix have revealed official player numbers yet, but the expectation is that by launching directly into PS Plus, people with a PS4 or PS5 can jump in to try it out risk-free. Foamstars will be available in the PS Plus Essential lineup for one month as per usual, with the game becoming a paid-for title on the PlayStation Store from March 5, 2024 , with support continuing at least for the next year. Certain players have aired their grievances towards Foamstars’ high-priced microtransactions model, but this hasn’t dissuaded others from immediately taking to the game’s characters and creating rafts of fan art.
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Okatani and Rickey recognise that a hero shooter can live or die on the strength of its characters, and more importantly its character designs, so this was an essential factor to get right. “We want to have them loved worldwide and have all players say ‘that’s my favourite character’,” Okatani-san continues. “That’s why we have this large variety of characters in the lineup”. From the jet-spraying sanitiser Rave breaker, who uses a wide hose to cover the ground in foam, from the long-range sniping Baristador, Square Enix wanted took the time to make each look and feel distinct to play. “A lot of love has been put into them”.
Star power
So important was it to Rickey-san that Foamstars featured wholesome and identifiable characters for people to latch onto, the director and producer briefly butt heads. “I said to director Rickey ‘maybe we don’t need to put that much effort into the characters’. He replied to me ‘no, we need to put so much strength into the characters, otherwise I won’t be working with you on this’,” Okatani chuckles. Rickey-san held his ground, leading to the striking nature of the titular characters seen in the game today. “While I understand his producer view that having so much effort put into every single character is very cost heavy,” he says, “I really did want to create some loveable characters”.
Rickey fighting so hard to make the Foamstars lineup as distinct and diverse as possible makes sense when you consider how the idea for the game came about. Because while Splatoon may have been an influence, his inspiration to make a bubble-based shooter stems much closer to home. “When playing games at home in the living room, whether it’d be shooting zombies or ripping enemies apart, my wife would be sitting next to me, take her smartphone, and go to the bedroom,” he reveals. “That made me feel like I was chasing her out. I wanted to make a game where my wife could sit next to me, [where] we could communicate with each other and have a really fun time”.
Why foam, then? Because while the act of escorting a giant rubber duck in one of Foamstars’ three core game modes brings to mind images of bubbles, the game’s central theme isn’t just limited to bathing. Foams are found everywhere from fizzy drinks, to whipped coffee, and champagne, Square Enix had to be sure not to limit itself. And just if you think its run out of ideas, Okatani explains that “it’s very fun to come up with them” even if everything in the game will always “revolve around foam”.
It’s this obsession with foam that led to one of the shooter’s core mechanics, whereby when a player has been covered enough in suds, players can confirm their “chill” either by continuing to shoot or bashing into them using their character’s slideboard. “Since foam is this 3D substance that remains after you sprayed it, that’s how I came up with foam creating the typography of the map,” says Rickey-san. “Foam doesn’t hurt because it’s soft, so that’s how we came up with the Foamed Up mechanic in the game”. Initial internal testing was tried using a 3v3 team setup, but it wasn’t deemed chaotic enough. “We tested out various numbers of players on each team using the current hardware, and through the testing we settled on the 4v4 format”.
While right now it’s tough to tell whether Foamstars will end up having the legs of other successful PS Plus launch games like Fall Guys and Rocket League – both of which ended up being bought by Epic Games, interestingly enough – there’s no denying that Square Enix has succeeded in fulfilling a gap in PlayStation’s multiplayer library. All the studio can do now is sit back and wait, hoping that PlayStation players continue to enjoy the taste of foam they’ve been able to sip so far.
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