Square Enix's Foam-Based Shooter Attempts To Get A Second Lease On Life As Foamstars Goes F2P

This is one of those "self-inflicted" wounds that Square Enix seems to keep making over the years. Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming that their shooter Foamstars is a ground-breaking game or anything. It's fine. I only played it at all though because, at launch, it was free that month for PS Plus subscribers. Had it not been, I would never have paid the box fee.

It's kind of fun and while Square hates it being compared to Splatoon, it's a lot like that game with a bit more verticality since you can get up on the foam you spray everywhere. However, I stopped playing it when it became a chore to wait on a match.

The initial box fee and the exclusivity to PS4 and PS5 are choices I just cannot understand given the game's genre. It clearly needs as many players as possible for the main gameplay loop. Both of these choices limit your player count before it even launches. If your game isn't doing something VERY new, these barriers make no sense.

Today, one of those barriers falls. While Foamstars is still (stunningly) exclusive to PlayStation, it no longer requires a box fee to try it out. The new F2P model really couldn't have taken much to implement, given that the paid for version already had a very similar cosmetics/season cash shop common in the space this game live in.

You can hit up Foamstars on the PlayStation Store for free right now and hop into Season 8, "Diamond Jam." More maps are becoming available in modes that previously excluded them, and a new "Diamond Chips" currency has been introduced allowing for the purchase of new cosmetics. Diamond Jam ends on November 7th.