Well, this is a first of many, I feel. Fray, a game by the studio Brain Candy, an indie team that had passion for this game, this online multiplayer that anyone could get into. Fray was a game set in 2098 in a cyberpunk setting, you play as one of three giant corporations that want complete control over the Earth’s virtual communication system, and hire four soldiers to take out the other companies. Cyberpunk settings were always some of my favorite, so I was interesting in playing this game. So how is it? Well… It’s nothing. You can buy this game off Steam right now, but I wouldn’t bother. Not because the game is broken and bad, I mean, it is, but because you actively can’t. Fray is a game that is no longer playable. There is no single player campaign, and all you got are tutorials which are a textbook long. This game is nothing more than a title screen you pay for. But what got it reviewed so badly? I have to find a reason why it was reviewed so bad. So, after looking into gameplay footage, I was able to discover why. Yeah, I know it’s cheating that I am not playing it myself, but you can’t blame me. There is no way to play this game.




So the first problem with this online multiplayer game is that your team of four soldiers has no AI. You have to control each character individually in a turn-based style battle. You get a set of asic shooter characters. Medics, taks, the usual. But I noticed that they all have upgrades that are locked out to you unless you play hours of the game. That is a mess in an online game. If someone has played for hours (Which let’s be real, who would play Fray for hours), they could be unstoppable, and new players would be miserable. Also, you only get experience for winning. So if a player who has all the gear beats a lower level player, they get more experience than if a low level player beats a high level enemy. For an RPG fan like myself, that is fucking atrocious. So now that we got all that, let’s start talking about the actual gameplay.
The environments are really dull. They all are just long corridors of grey. Occasionally you’ll get some scenery, but that’s about it. As for the gameplay itself, it’s a turn-based strategy with FPS elements. Now I am all for mixing two genres together for a creative style, but oh man, does this game not make that enjoyable. Unless you are hiding directly behind a wall, you are getting hit and your AI will not attack enemies directly. You gotta get in range, move them, and only when they are in a specific angle will they finally shoot the enemy. This is not a shooter where spotting a target down a hall and getting a good shot takes skill. No, this is a game where walking down the hall to meet the target like a friend in school takes a lot of your damn patience. For an action packed strategy game, you sure do a lot of walking. I’ve read stories of people running out their turns and ending the match before even finding a target because the maps are so long and dull looking that you could get lost. Man, why play the latest CoD when you could be playing Fray, aside from the fact that the servers are down and you no longer can?
So after watching a bunch of gameplay that was as fun as a nature documentary in middle school, I can see why this game got little attention and later died out. But what about the studio that made it, Brain Candy? Well, this would be their first and last game. After this game failed back in 2012, the studio went other. But their Twitter account is still up, but hasn’t been updated since 2012. All I know is that they were a studio based in France and were really excited to discuss Fray. I was hoping to go onto Twitter (Terrifying, I know) and ask any of the developers about the development of Fray, but I couldn’t seem to find anyone. If anyone could find me a developer from Fray so I can ask them questions, please let me know. With that said, Fray was a mistake, not out of malicious intent or lack of communication, but just a studio with admirations far too big for their own good and they paid the price for it. Next time, we play a game I can actually get my hands on, for better or for worse.