Fraymakers/Development

The development of Fraymakers is estimated to have begun privately in 2018, with the game being publicly announced on September 10, 2020 and publicly released on January 18, 2023. As the game is currently in an unfinished state, active development is still ongoing.

Early development
On July 25, 2017, shortly after the release of the Beta version of Super Smash Flash 2, Adobe announced that it would end support for Adobe Flash Player, which SSF2 uses for its engine, on December 31, 2020. Although SSF2 would remain playable and in development, this led the game's director Gregory McLeod to decide that he should work on a more sustainable and commercially viable project that would not rely on the aging software. Having developed SSF2 for many years, he wanted to apply what he learned from his experience into a new platform fighting game, which SSF2 Team had frequently come up with ideas for over the course of its development. Discussions would continue over the Internet and at events such as Super Smash Con, with one founding concept being user-generated content. Although the idea was previously considered for SSF2 with expansion characters, the developers desired a more accessible and streamlined implementation than what SSF2 would have allowed for. Other loose concepts, including a playable roster of characters from other independent games and an additional roster of assist characters, would also be established early into planning the game.

Production of the game alongside FrayTools started privately in 2018 with a small team founded by Gregory McLeod and co-founded by James Hadden, later known as Team Fray. The team would consist of then-current SSF2 developers Ramsey Kaid and Mass, as well as former developer Max Silverman and frequent collaborator Jake Siegers. Additional developers were also contracted to assist with artwork and programming, along with Kira Buckland, who would be the announcer for the game to reprise her role from the original Super Smash Flash, and the jazz band Super Soul Bros., the members of which would produce the soundtrack for the game. Many different independent game studios were also contacted to provide licenses for the franchises included, which the developers claim were very approachable. For prototypes of the game, much of the spriting and programming work would be performed using SpriteSatchel, a tool designed by McLeod to convert SWF files to HTML-compatible sprite sheets, in order to maintain the workflow offered by Adobe Flash development from SSF2. However, as FrayTools became more stable, it quickly became the standard tool used during development.

Plans for the game were first publicly teased on March 23, 2018 in a YouTube video by Bowler, in which James Hadden teased that SSF2 developers may develop an original platform-based fighting game in the future and gauged interest from the video's audience. On September 10, 2020, the game was officially announced under the codename McLeodGaming Next and scheduled to be formally revealed through Kickstarter during winter. The official name was later revealed to be Fraymakers on October 13, 2020, with the Kickstarter date being changed to November of that year.

Kickstarter campaign
The Kickstarter campaign showcasing the game was launched on November 18, 2020, with plans to include six playable characters, twenty Assists, five stages, a soundtrack by Super Soul Bros., custom content using FrayTools, and online gameplay with rollback netcode, among other features. Its minimum funding goal was $46,000, which was reached within three hours of the campaign launching. The campaign ended on December 17, 2020 after receiving a total of $364,922 and fulfilling most stretch goals, including three additional playable characters, a downloadable character to be released after the game's launch, thirty additional Assists, eight additional stages, Super Attacks, match modifiers, the Fraybets game mode, two alternative soundtracks by OverClocked ReMix and Jules Conroy, Jacob Alpharad Rabon and Joshua TomaMoto Tomar as alternative announcers, a Nintendo Switch release, and animated reveal trailers for two of the unannounced characters.

Various rewards were promised for backers depending on their pledge, including copies of the game, access to the Tester Build, access to backer-exclusive channels and developer Q&A's on the McLeodGaming Discord server, exclusive online tags and golden costumes for characters, having their name in the game's credits, a digital tome, custom artwork of a character, and having that character appear in the credits. All backers would later receive a survey for future content desires on December 28, 2020 and another survey to specify their rewards on July 15, 2022.

To promote the game during its campaign, various "Content Spotlight" updates were released to Kickstarter, which showcased previously announced playable characters and Assists and detailed their functions. Notably, Stardrop and Rhythm Doctor were both revealed as Assists in these updates after their respective developers contacted Team Fray following the game's reveal. Additionally, stretch goals were planned and gradually revealed for additional features, an art contest was held on Newgrounds, and developers appeared in several videos and podcasts to discuss the game.

Post-Kickstarter development
Development of the game continued after the Kickstarter campaign ended with a goal to release the game in Early Access by early 2022. On May 1, 2021, #SaturdayFray was announced as a move to showcase weekly development updates such as new animations, stages, and music every Saturday on the Fraymakers Twitter and Instagram accounts, with monthly roundups being shown on the game's Kickstarter page. Through this, the first four characters to be made available in the Early Access build of the game were revealed, including, , , and. Additionally, a poll was held from December 18, 2021 to December 31, 2021 to determine an Assist hailing from Rivals of Aether to be added. The final #SaturdayFray announcement took place on June 4, 2022 with the reveal of Niko as an Assist.

On February 2, 2022, Team Fray released a progress update to Kickstarter, revealing that the early access release of the game had been delayed from early 2022 to August 2022, with the Tester Build being scheduled for June or July 2022. On April 1, 2022, a second trailer for the game premiered during Rivals Direct 4, which revealed Kragg as the winner of the Rivals of Aether Assist poll and showcased the content to be made available at the launch of Early Access. On June 20, 2022, a second progress report was released, which revealed a release window of August or September 2022 for Early Access and July or August 2022 for the Tester Build.

On August 15, 2022, it was announced that the Tester Build of the game was almost ready to be released soon, with the Early Access launch being estimated for September 2022. The Tester Build later released on August 31, 2022, with FrayTools launching publicly alongside it. A website was also released that detailed known issues and upcoming features for the game, which would be updated over time, and included a survey to submit bug reports and other feedback.

On September 22, 2022, it was announced that the Early Access launch was delayed to an unspecified date in order to ensure major issues are tested and fixed during the Tester Build period. On November 17, 2022, a trailer premiered that revealed Gunman Clive as an Assist for the game.

On December 31, 2022, the release date for Early Access was announced to be on January 18, 2023. During the month of January, Team Fray distributed Steam keys for the Tester Build to several Super Smash Bros. players and content creators to help promote the game's upcoming launch, such as Choctopus, Coney, and TKbreezy. Early Access later released on the aforementioned date, accompanied by a launch trailer revealing Crewmate as an Assist.

Early Access development
As initially planned during the Kickstarter campaign, the Early Access build of the game launched with four playable characters, twenty Assists, five stages, custom content using FrayTools, and online gameplay with rollback netcode, as well as other features such as a limited Training mode and soundtracks from three separate groups. The initial launch led to widespread criticism from players due to frequent performance issues, particularly with online gameplay, and problematic controller support. Additionally, issues in Team Fray's Kickstarter data led to incorrect Steam key distribution, with many backers not receiving keys or receiving incorrect amounts of keys. On January 20, 2023, Team Fray responded to these issues with their plans going forward, with new keys being distributed to backers. On January 27, 2023, the team announced their plans to revoke all previous Steam keys and distribute new ones to the correct backers, which would begin the following day.

On March 16, 2023, a Kickstarter update was released that outlined the progress of the playable characters' animations and revealed that the fifth playable character had started development. The next Assist to be added was also revealed to be Super Hexagon, which later released with v0.5.11 on June 11, 2023. Other content being worked on and further optimizations to performance and controller issues were also outlined. On July 1, 2023, Rockman was revealed to be the next Assist after Super Hexagon, and it later released with v0.5.12 on July 17, 2023.

On July 22, 2023, was revealed in a playable state to be the fifth playable character to be made available in the game, with  planned to be the sixth. The following day, a Kickstarter progress update was posted that detailed Ultra Fishbunjin 3000's progression and revealed that all characters released after the Watcher would be released with fully completed sprites. This update also revealed that Fraymakers would be featured at Super Smash Con 2023 and PAX West 2023, where Ultra Fishbunjin 3000 would be playable before his full release. Additionally, changes made to the game since the previous progress update were listed, such as the initial four playable characters having almost fully completed sprites, improvements made to online play and custom content integration, and the fact that FrayTools and its associated plug-ins were made available on GitHub. Although Ultra Fishbunjin 3000 was initially planned to be released shortly after PAX West, Team Fray instead held a poll on September 6, 2023 for Twitter users to vote on whether they would prefer the character to be released early in an incomplete state or later with all sprite drawings finished. The latter option won out, with the character set to be released on November 3, 2023.

Throughout the development of Early Access, various surveys were held in order to track down issues and gauge feedback. In addition to the aforementioned feedback survey, the Kickstarter update on January 20, 2023 included two surveys to gather player information, with one addressing performance issues and the other addressing controller issues. These surveys would receive updates to coincide with particular Early Access updates. On April 8, 2023, a survey to suggest specific changes for playable characters and Assists was released, which led to major balancing and moveset changes across the cast starting with v0.5.10 on May 20, 2023.