We’ll find out soon enough if there’s enough room for two party shooters where you attack enemies with foam when Foamstars comes out in early February.
The unapologetically derivative four-vs-four third-person title from Square Enix is scheduled for release on February 6. Following its initial announcement in May 2023, talks of it being the lovechild of Splatoon and Fortnite emerged. The fact that it’s exclusive to PlayStation didn’t help either – it’s arguably PlayStation’s attempt to try and fill a relatively untapped niche that Splatoon created on the Nintendo Switch.
Equal parts colorful and chaotic, Foamstars sees players use foam to shoot down others and protect themselves using foam-built structures. But, as much fun as it would be to try and see what this Splatoon-like game is all about, we have to answer a simple question first: is it free to play or is it a premium game?
Unfortunately, Foamstars isn’t a free-to-play title – it’s a premium game that costs $29.99. However, you won’t need to spend as much to get your hands on a copy of Foamstars just yet.
In what’s easily an attempt to drive up subscription numbers before the end of the current fiscal year, Square Enix and PlayStation have partnered to make Foamstars one of the rare games to launch on the PlayStation Plus subscription service. This means that the game will be available to all PS Plus subscribers, regardless of tier, starting on February 6. If you redeem it while it’s part of the PS Plus lineup – it’s unclear if Foamstars is part of the usual trio of freebies for PS Plus Essential – you get to keep it on your library for as long as you’re subscribed to the service.
If, however, you’re joining the foam party late or you would like to buy a separate copy of Foamstars that you can keep, you can wait until March 5 to buy it for $29.99.
Of course, we do recommend subscribing to PS Plus. Aside from the added benefit of getting a monthly rotation of games, you’ll need the most basic PS Plus subscription tier, PS Plus Essential, to play online multiplayer games. We’re pretty sure this includes Foamstars. So, while you might not be interested in getting Foamstars between February 6 and March 5 yet, you can redeem your copy for “free” and just leave it on your library for when you’re feeling foamy.
Based on how Square Enix is describing Foamstars, it’s a free game if you redeem it via PS Plus and skip the completely optional Premium Season Pass, which only costs $5.99 for the entire year.
As a bonus, Sony usually puts in extra effort in its PS Plus offerings in the final quarter of the financial year, which will run from January through March. Already, we’re seeing an uptick of quality games on its PS Plus Essential and PS Plus Extra additions this month. The lineup for February and March are expected to be just as good if not better.
With at least one year of content already planned ahead of its launch on PS4 and PS5, Foamstars is the kind of low-risk investment that could ended up being much more enjoyable than it has any right of being – its AI use be damned.
