Square Enix has just announced a brand-new shooter called Foamstars in which you surf along bubbles while firing what looks to be champagne bottles at your enemies. It's launching on PS4 and PS5, though no specific date has been given yet.
Already, comparisons are being drawn to Splatoon and games like The World Ends With You and Persona, though the former is more tied to the gameplay while the latter is based on aesthetics and vibes, particularly its choice of jazz music.
The trailer began with CG characters battling it out in a neon-lit city before cutting to actual in-game footage. Here we see characters going into bubbles and launching themselves at others, creating splashes of foam, while others summon foam beams from the sky to flood the arena. It's unclear if Foamstars will launch on Xbox or Nintendo Switch, but for those on PlayStation, you might finally have an answer to Splatoon to try out.
Foamstars is a completely new IP from Square Enix, though immediately after its reveal at the PlayStation Showcase, many took to Twitter to draw comparisons to Splatoon, with some joking that Nintendo is sitting in the wings, watching the stream while ringing up its lawyers. It's not that blatant a rip-off, but at least those without a Switch can enjoy something similar now.
While we don't know when Foamstars will launch, Square Enix is gearing up to launch Final Fantasy 16 next month on June 22, and it's a huge shift for the series. At least, in terms of tone. Developers were "required" to watch Game of Thrones to help craft a more grounded fantasy world, with SE even tempted to drop Chocobos altogether. But in the end, it decided to stick with them due to them being a Final Fantasy staple, although they're called horses in Japan. They look nothing like horses, but you do you Square Enix.
Other than Final Fantasy 16 and Foamstars, Square Enix is still working on its NFT game. That dead fad. In 2023. Dubbed Symbiogenesis, it got its first gameplay trailer back in March, and it looks about how you'd expect a triple-A NFT project to look. It's not as exciting as a new Final Fantasy or Splatoon-like (is that a term? It is now), but it exists, eh?