Since the project's launch trailer, Foamstars, an upcoming 4v4 team-based competitive shooter, has faced countless comparisons to Nintendo's popular area controlled IP. Imitation can be the greatest form of flattery, but it's not difficult to see the similarities. According to a report from Video Games Chronicle, Square Enix producer Kosuke Otani is quite tired of having to address it. 

“First of all, yes,” Otani replies, when asked about being bored with the Splatoon comparison. “There have been many comparisons on the internet, but also, we saw on social media that the people who actually played it saw that it’s a completely different game and I hope you also agree.

“I feel like the mechanic of having the things you shoot stay on the field is very unique,” he added, joking that it would be “a great honour” if fans eventually give the genre a nickname akin to ‘Soulsborne’ or ‘Metroidvania’"

In the interest of fairness, Otani does have a point. Any survival horror that followed Resident Evil back in the late 90's immediately faced comparisons to Capcom's landmark franchise. Same with the fighting game genre, throughout the golden age of fighting games, something was either a Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat clone. When given time to breathe, a project can borrow that inspiration and potentially become its own influential entity. 

In fairness to Foamstars (which Square Enix wants to market as a "party shooter"), it looks a little more unique than merely covering the area in the foam color of your respective team(s). The foam is capable of transforming the environment, and the meta appears to be more combat-centric; knocking out your opponents before their teammates have a chance to revive them. It'll be interesting to see how the three modes (Happy Bath Survival, Rubber Duck Party, and Smash the Star) intend to diversify the play style. It has the advantage of launching on PS+ to subscribers for free. The field of competitive team shooters is packed, can this stand out, or draw in enough players to maintain interest?

Otani also confirms that Foamstars will utilize Midjourney, an A.I. generating tool, to transform text prompts into icons. The producer states that while all of Foamstars' game mechanics are created and implemented by hand, Square Enix has expressed interest in using A.I. generators for gameplay in the future. 

Foamstars will be available on PS5|PS4 to all PlayStation Plus members between February 6th to March 4th 2024.

SOURCE: Video Games Chronicle