As Fraymakers strides into 2024, the introduction of new characters is almost a given major draw for new players. These characters, each with their unique flair, playstyle, and interactions, are likely to invigorate the vanilla game's dynamics, maybe we will even see human beings in quickplay as the roster grows from time to time or more tournaments which should also bring more people and pros in. Speaking of pros, the mentioned addition of training mode should cater to players eager to refine their skills. Which, accommodating both vanilla and custom characters and maps, I suspect training mode will raise the game's skill ceiling substantially almost immediately, allowing for better YouTube clips, which as we've seen is how Fraymakers has seen most player count success thus far. Hopefully, we will have more assist combo metas besides Birthday, Peppino, Lea, Krag, or Fishbunjin OR OR Tankman if you're good OR OR OR Super Hexagon if you're good with odd spacing (at least that's what I've seen). Definitely more combo videos though maybe a combo contest could be a future possibility?

As we've seen throughout 2023 the game engine and Fraytools API have evolved significantly, bringing about better gameplay modded or vanilla. The scope for intricate and imaginative custom content is set to widen and become more accessible, I can imagine we all cannot wait to see what comes from this. Improvements to the vanilla game I'd like to see would be playable stage slopes this year for stage variety both vanilla and custom or circular hitboxes in Fraytools (because I'm kind of sick of playing final destination or battlefield variants over and over again), maybe new announcer options because to be honest not a fan of the current one (sorry). Though obvious, most of all the usual lag reduction, improvements with controller interfacing (because what else would you play on a keyboard? HAH PLEBIANS or psychopaths you decide), and last and least the ability to be subscribed to more workshop mods all at once without crashing (It would be nice, maybe something to tell you what mods cause you to crash on startup or otherwise).

It was mentioned FrayBets probably gets added this year (2024), I partially doubt this because it seems like it would be such a low-priority item on McLeod's radar compared to training mode, which ups the competitive nature of the game, or (to elaborate people have already been making their own training modes via workshop addons), bug fixing, stage making, character making, FrayTools, making slopes real, re-adding hazards to their completely flat stages, and probably so should probably be high priority. In other words, unless it was blatantly stated they were working on adding this, I don't think we will see this soon, it'll probably be like when Nintendo finally added Home-Run Contest to Ultimate with the 4th DLC character release Banjo Kazooie. Though you are talking about this year and there are 365 oppo... 346 days of opportunities as of writing this so who knows a year is a long yet short time. Besides, it doesn't add much to the core of the game in the first place. I know very few people (zero) who'd be at all interested (besides myself when the stars align and I'm in a certain mood) in watching Fraymakers beyond replays, tournaments, and YouTube. So low priority, probably the end of the year at best or 2025 I'd guess paired with spectator mode which for now you can just screenshare with someone. But having seen Alpharad's Amiibo tournaments, it's not a bad idea as long as it's later.

If you are hopeful for growth and content concerning Fraymakers it's best to show the game in a more polished state later rather than now because as you said the bugs of 2023 chased some people away. Maybe some won't come back while others may despite first impressions come back because of peer pressure or something of such (besides the Wombo Combos would probably be better later on as well as Weltaro's single missing sprite animation hopefully being removed, changed, or patched). I'd say for now upcoming Fraymakers developments are poised to not only enhance the game's appeal to existing players but also to prepare before drawing in new possibly flakey enthusiasts, and the best way I've seen this is to add new characters and stages (not flat ones) from new interesting IPs. So for now I'll confidently predict this is the kind of growth Fraymakers needs right now, as it may not be drawing many players right now it's definitely what needs to happen to maintain future new players and to further flesh out the game's formula for good impressions. We can wait for the non-core-related elements of the game for next year.

PS. Oh one more prediction I bet training mode comes coupled with match modifiers, I wonder what we will be able to choose from. Thanks for reading to my TedTalk/FrayTalk.

PPS. Who knows what'll happen because as McLeodGaming wrote at the end of their kickstarter campaign page "game development is, to some degree, inherently unpredictable."




Old review: I hope they fixed the problems with people clipping through the stage on inclines soon rather than later, I wanna see cool custom stages.