VN - Ren'Py - Race of Life [Act 1 v1.02] [Underground Studio]

So, end of Chap 2. This game has exceeded my expectations so far. There are a number of things to like about it. The artwork is awesome, and the characters are distinct individuals with distinct personalities. The social interactions between the MC and the female characters make sense in a real world way for the most part, as do the lewds. It's not just random girls tripping and falling onto MC's dick. The writing is likewise adult and not geared to the horny teenager crowd. There are adult concerns and interactions, intelligence and adult references. The game has the obligatory goofy but lovable sidekick, but he's not a complete idiot and again the friendship between him and MC makes sense. Lots of what appear to be meaningful choices too.

On the downside, the lewd scenes so far lack imagination, however good the models look, and the animations are mostly very short loops. There are some moments of genuine humor, but a lot of it fails a bit in the delivery. If you an say that there are some comic timing issues in text based dialogues then that's how it feels. Not bad, but not as good as it could be.

The positives way outweigh the minor negatives though, and I'm looking forward to future releases. This could be a top tier game.

TLDR Low end of 5 stars for this site, I'd say. The renders look great, and the banter dialogue is actually reasonably funny at least half the time, but... The pacing feels off in many parts. Not just in a porny way, obviously. The story does at least have a direction, and the characters feel distinct, but there's just too many skip-inducing scenes for a VN that's trying to take itself seriously.

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There's a lot of ranting about academia and attempts at using scientific jargon, but only about half of it actually makes sense. How are they going over bodies on an incline after "advanced E&M" and "wave equations" in a college-level physics class? Yes, the dialogue implies they're reviewing it, but you wouldn't review addition and multiplication in a calculus class...

One source of constant confusion: the setting is supposed to be some kind of prestigious research university, but many small details make it feel like something between a high school and a community college. This is forgivable in a lot of VNs that are clearly using the setting to pretend their characters are all intended to be 18+, but for a story that actually focuses on problems with academia, it's really jarring.

There's also a lot of focus on car stuff. Some of that's to be expected, and maybe people that actually know about modding or racing cars will enjoy it. I for one know nothing about cars, so they could be making half this shit up. Either way, to me, these parts also often drag on.

Basically, show, don't tell, yada yada yada. Jargon should be well-researched and used sparingly, not trying to hammer the reader over the head with how smart the characters/writer are - that often backfires as soon as one bit is out of place.

Fun writing and beautiful art makes this a very easy recommendation. My one ask is that there's an option to skip the driving choices mini game. I know nothing about driving and while the answer is in the text I just end up rolling back to pick the optimal choice. I recognise this is a preference though which is why it doesnt effect my score.

Really impressive , AMAZING, Great VN , one of the best starts in game so far , story, characters, visuals, MC, all is a 5 stars for me.
A lot of potential to become a top 3 games in the site , even the "ex wife" works well , drama is good for the story , high quality renders and scenes they are just superb . The car race parts are fun , and not a lot of games are like this with the car settings well made.

EDIT: We finally got to eat her ass. Great job guys!

Sexy women, tragic story with the chance to redeem yourself.
Not a boring high school/college student but rather a genius yet unreliable PhD student who has the abilities to create something special, yet only now has shown to be serious enough to actually evolve it into something.
I love the conflict with the ex-wife we are starting to fix while also the upcoming conflict with the girlfriend. I also love the racing scene we are experiencing and can't wait for the upcoming Fast and Furious references.

5 stars only when I get to eat Jammine's ass. I'm serious.

There's a bunch of dialogue in this game, and I skipped some of it. I don't really like the "ex-wife" kind of thing, but it worked. There's also a lot of content, and choices matter in this game, which really got me invested. The visuals are good, the sound is good, the characters are good—pretty much everything is good. What else can I say? Definitely going into one of my favorites.

Very good VN with a lot of potential. Most of the characters are written well and have good opportunities to develop their stories, but we will see how it will be over time. The main plot is also more mature than most VNs of this type. The MC is quite motivated to act by stories. It would be good if this was the main direction of the next parts and not more sex scenes with random girls. For now, the rating is encouraging, but we'll see what the next updates will bring

Extremely high quality game. Story/setting is good, although I'm not personally a fan of the whole ex-wife concept. Also, too much dialogue sometimes. Where this game truly stands out is the graphics. Beautiful! I love the stretch marks and realistic tummy on Veronica, very nice touch. My only gripe with the animations, which are otherwise fantastic, is that in some scenes the characters will have really obvious loop points in their animation. Really breaks the immersion, but it's only noticeable sometimes. The overall visual appeal is basically unmatched among 3D games right now IMO. This game could really be a top 3 game of all time at this rate! Great work!

What can I say, the quality of this is amazing. Renders are superb, story is refreshing. There is actually depth unlike some other "games" on here. Really love the setting and the whole cars thing. Realistic progression and amazing characters. Absolutely love it! 5stars.

This game is well made other than the writing. Unfortunately that's a fairly experience-ruining problem.

The visuals are definitely good, but nothing particularly special. The rendering is competent, and the posing/animations are well done. Definitely a step above stock animations and poses everywhere.

The story isn't very interesting, but it's decent enough to where it could still be very enjoyable. The real issue is the dialogue. Right off the bat you're hit with boring walls of text from pointless side characters. Every scene with a love interest is filled with painfully unfunny jokes and absolutely cringe, unauthentic flirting from the MC. It really makes the whole thing unplayable for me, which is pretty disappointing.

What can I say about this game! The game has EVERYTHING....a good story...extra class visuals...lovable, authentic and sexy characters....good animations. Finally a VN that touches me emotionally as well. Decisions in this game HAVE a meaning and a weight. I cannot praise the Devs enough. You have done an extraordinary job and created a game that is SO good that it should be made into a movie. THANK YOU for my new favorite VN

Almost forgot about this game with the long development time between ch1 and 2, but the dev delivered big time. Ch2 is much longer than ch1 enough that the game as a whole feels like there is substantial content with just 2 chapters. Render quality is high, writing is good, highly recommend checking this game out.

First off I want to say that I don't play many male protagonist games being a woman, but after checking this one out after hearing some hype, I was really pleasantly surprised.

Yes, it's the usual guy with various hotties lusting after him like his curvy co-worker and students etc. type scenario. What makes it stand out though is the story. I got really invested in it.

Without spoiling too much, we have the ex-wife who acts like she hates him, fun and tense fast and the furious type races where your choices affect how it will end. Add a story arc that has s tragic situation and you actually begin to feel bad for the main character. I even wanted to get him reconciled with his ex-wife as you discover she had a rough time off it and the MC caused much of that. Moulding him into a better person is pretty rewarding.

The visuals are really good too, same with audio. This definitely is among the top VN's on here or certainly should be.

Updates have been slow but at least delivered in a good sized amount of content. If the dev can keep up this level of quality, then they definitely have a winner here. See what I did there?

Highly recommended.

Great game.

Love the models, characters, story, and music. Going to be a real hard choice later if I have to choose between all the girls in this. Excited to see where the racing part of the story goes too.

Only complaint is having to wait for the next chapter..... cause damn its good.

Didn´t know what to expect from this game, didn´t know much about it... Now I know I am really very much glad I got to know it.

TL ; DR: This game is amazing and is more than worth your time 5/5

Where to start...

It was year 2023... Just kidding.

Few days ago I thought I´d give this piece a try as I saw it being praised on reddit. I could not believe others saying it is so good. Boy, oh boy now I believe it.

The story is amongst the most captivating and interesting I have seen. The sheer will to help someone you love, to do everyting for them, mixed with action-packed racing scene and attempt to make a breakthrough in science is very, very, and I mean very well combined and executed. This was such a great ride.
The Dahlia is amid the top 3 LI´s in this game after those two below .
The sound of those cars and even information and glossary present about topic - cars and broad terms are very useful and show passion made into this game.

Current length is many hours long, despite being only Ep.2.
The renders are phenomenal, on point and beautiful.
One of the main themes, being cars, are done on par with minigame flawlessly. It was so thrilling to play them and very exciting also.

About the girls... I really love Jasmine in this, and I see I am not the only one. And probably you will too understand it. Her scenes are so endearing, wholesome and funny, as well as encouraging, cooperative and complementary. She is just so freaking cute .

My second most favourite is Maggie... No spoilers here. And love Angel also .

The music is also good and very exciting and enjoyable at times, like minigames and so.

Anyway... Just try this, this is a must play here . It´s funny, wholesome, action-packed, cute, interesting and gripping all at once and much more.

PROS
- Visuals are great. Renders and animations are as good as the top AVN games on F95.
- Great character development, the writer is successful is making you care about the characters. Particularly Allison, who is initially presented as an antagonist but the writing really makes you care for her and her struggles. Thats if you pick the good choices with her, if you pick the bad choices, you can still get a hatefuck scene! I like that you can still get rewarded even though you're going through a nontraditional path. Which brings me to my next favorite thing about this game...
- FINALLY a game with ACTUAL ROUTES and your decisions matters! So many games these days are just a single-route boring, linear, kinetic harem game where the dev has kinda decided everything for you. But your choices matter here. This alone has won me over and will subscribe to dev.
- Generous amount of NSFW scenes and it doesn't feel like he is just adding them for fanservice. The sex scenes make sense and they dont feel rushed or lacking any buildup.

CONS
- I actually like the minigame. Its reminds me of playing drag races on NFS Underground 2. The only issue is that they are mandatory. So if you are doing multiple playthroughs to see all the scenes, you must do all the minigames all over again which can be kinda tedious and frustrating (it depends on reaction speed). Wish he would do what most other games with minigames do, and just offer a way to turn them off.

Top Tier game, highly recommended. Great pacing, incredible visuals, compelling story, good sound effects, etc. The only negative that I can think of is that I'm going to have to wait for the next update. Don't sleep on this one folks!

Race of Life has the potential to entrench itself in the top echelon of AVNs.

The renders are great, the story is interesting, and even though at this time only 2 episodes have been released, there's a fair few hours of content to sink your teeth into.

Keep up the phenomenal work UndergroundStudio.

quite a hidden gem. really nice renders-animations and from start to finish. and the story so far so far is great and the mini game is quite fun and adictive and you have to spend more then 5 braincells to do it.

love that the dev put time into the game from start and alredy pratice making renders-animations unlike alot of others who go into this with 0% skills and you can see from ep 1 to like 4 that they gain skills and may have to reboot old eps. this race of life feels great from start to finish ( the current ep its at ) animations looks clean no clunky stuff or slow frames. renders are beatyfull and amazing. loving the game so far and cant wait for future updates. will 100% buy on steam when release ep 3 and the act 1 of all eps out

<3 keep doing what you doing UndergroundStudio

First episode was pretty good and made me want to see more and as of second episode this is my favorite game on this site. Excellent renders, very enjoyable story that I didn't feel like skipping any part of it. I hope devs get enough support to keep them motivated. I can't wait for more.