VN - Ren'Py - Race of Life [Act 1 v1.04.5] [Underground Studio]

4.5 stars, will give it for 5 now. Great models, the writing is good, and a unique plot. Overall this is one of the higher quality VNs out there and would recommend. This game is story centered and has relatively few sex scenes compared to the amount of content in it. There is a good amount of content relative to how long its been in development (~1.5 years) and for the quality of said content.

What keeps this from being a 5* for me is there are simply too many characters in this game. It looks like there are about 5 or maybe 6 LI main characters, and over half a dozen side characters. With the different branching paths, it is too much for any given character to be fully fleshed out (outside of probably the Veronica character so far), I would have preferred if the story was more narrow and less ambitious - i.e. maybe removing the Maggie character side plot

Honestly almost excellent. Great and mature writing, above average renders and pretty good dialogue as well. However, the LIs and the MC leave a bit to be desired.

Veronica is the most straightforward one, but it feels as if she was put there for tension since they were already "dating." There are others who are fun, but MC turns into an idiot with them. MC is no doubt smart, but loses all brain cells whenever close to Natalya or Jazmine. His characterization is all over the place. He's also very passive in bed, which does not fit his character.

It's really off-putting and it left me wanting to go back and make different choices just so I don't have to put up with MC's stupidity or with some LIs. For example, Allison is understandably angry at MC, but it's hard to put up with her.

Still a great game, but I wish the relationship building part of it was better and it might've been perfect.

Honestly, thus far it's pretty goddamn solid game. Good writing, gut-wrenching twist to setup the plot, characters feel very diverse and have some good personalities to them. Overall I really like it and will keep an eye on it.
Renders and animations are top notch aswell.

I don't really have anything negative to say other than some personal pet peeve really.

TL/DR: Enjoyable hybrid plot focus of being an academic/educator and a racer/grease-monkey. Great criminal undertones and melodrama- though....it is frankly a tad bit too heavy-handedly foreshadowed. Good build up on some of the relationships-while other need more time to cook. Some of the chicks are annoyingly libertine, and all of them are a bit too possessive; which can be fun, but can also be annoying if you are hoping for some poly routes.

+Good build up of relationships and character development.
+Good variety in LI backgrounds
+Well written
+I enjoyed all the gear-head jargon
+ Some types of routes you don't see very often- like the one with the MCs ex-wife Allison.
+Lots of different plot hooks to keep things interesting.
+Pretty smooth animations.
+ Veronica's vs younger women jealousy was fun. I'd love to see her possessiveness and desire to "stake a claim" manifest in lewder things.
+ Veronica's route is very nicely fleshed out. The other routes still need time to cook- but they have some decent progress on them.
+ MC looks pretty nice, but I wish he were a bit larger.
+ Hilarious and un-creepy male bro.

-- Some of the gals are too slutty. Makes you feel like you should go get tested for an STD after getting with them They could of course just be "acting" slutty and not in fact be that slutty- but we haven't figured that out yet.
- MC is too small to handle these smoke-show women. All that T and A would look a lot better being fucked by a larger man.
- Lack of petite women
- Unless the "German Neighbor" isn't a Russia spy who is trying to steal the MCs tech secrets, that route is annoyingly transparent. The developer left far too many bread-crumbs in there.
-The MC's style of dirty talk makes me wanna puke. Stop calling these good girls "whores" and "sluts"
- Poly / Harem does not currently seem to be an option.
- The dev should include a $3500 bid at the dam race for those of us who spent a bit of money tipping ppl / paying for shit for others instead of there being no option b/t a $3000 bid and a $3800 bid. ($3800 only being obtainable if you literally buy nothing in the game). It was annoying to miss out on an opportunity simply b/c we treated some ppl to things- and there was no in game reason why you shouldn't be able to bet all of w/e you had.

+ music
+ renders & great animations
+ mc & ex-wife. I like that "path of redemption" and hope at some point they will back together
+ story, poor Lilly
+ races - enjoyable minigame
+ mc is not a total loser, he is just "ok"
+ Veronica

- Jasmine is annoying
- mc is clueless, girls teasing him a lot and he doesn't know whats going on.. he also should do the same
- some conversations between characters are bit boring

Real branching starts in the middle of chapter 2, so 4 main saves for each girl is recommended, anyway it's solid avn, 4 stars from me

Yeah; well easily on of my favorite games of all time. A cool MC, a male friend that's actually awesome, an interesting story, fantastic LI's, great writing, and extraordinary renders. Perfection so far. I'm definitely in awe of this amazing game and I implore everyone to try it.

This game is very enjoyable. It is one of my favorite new titles out now. I would suggest if you are on the fence about this play it. I liked it so much during the demo I decided to join the Patreon. The developers are small time and I believe they both have full time jobs and work on this on the side. They deserve to be doing this full time and I cannot wait for the next upgrade. So you are are undecided or looking for something new to play with an interesting story and attractive girls then I suggest giving Race of Live a try.

Some of the best writing and humor I've seen in the genre. The premise is also very unique and it's always refreshing to see a more mature MC that doesn't act like a horndog and get laid every 5 seconds.

I can tell the story and game overall is building to be something really special and I will be watching the development with interest. Good luck to the developer!

Excellent game with great story and beautiful graphics. All girls are nice but by far the best one is Jasmin, closely followed by Allie. Keep up the great work with this game, I have played Episodes 1 and 2 as of this review.

I have no idea, how this game is getting the reviews it's getting.

Pros:
Animations
Renders

Cons:
Writing

This game is so poorly written. It feels like a redditor trying their hardest to be smart and clever. So many conversations have no point and drag on for way too long. They need to ask themselves what purpose does this dialog serve? Does it help the character/story in any way? Do people actually talk this way? The doctor character is the most glaring example that this dev doesn't know how to write realistic characters.

Although the visuals are nice, the writing isn't good enough to justify wasting your time. Remember this, your time is valuable, spend it on things worthy of it,

This game is really fun to play, the story is pretty consistent and unpredictable, i loved the racing aspect of the game, you need to shift the car manually and the cinematics are amazing, for me Jasmine (the redhead) was the most interesting character as she is involved in both your personal project and the racing scenes and she is straight up gorgeous, overall this game is a must play, it has everything, beautiful renders, meaningful choices in dialogue and interesting characters to explore.

This is a great game with very likeable characters, very good high quality renders and a good relatable story of a man who made mistakes in the past but is getting better and finding love and some fun while facing challenges.

Great game with a lot of potential that I'm looking foward to.

Story: Full of drama and great girls to choose from looks to different personalities. For me, the writing is the biggest point of a AVN. There are plenty of routes to choose from. The main detraction for me are the racing segments that I couldn't really get into, I used a mod to sort of just get through these

This game is a hidden game who needs more support.
+Renders: They are okey, the models are really atractive. Veronica and Jasmine are the choice for the big breasted community lmao
+Animations: Used where they belong. The race minigame is top class
+Story: Really cool so far, i hope the Maggie route doesnt drag the game down.

This is my first ever review of a game on this site.

Race of Life is an exceptionally well written, well executed world with a cast of thoughtfully different yet equally compelling characters. It is rare to find a game on this site so human, where emotions are visceral and real and not merely plot devices used to advance the plot from one sex scene to the next; the quality of dialogue here is especially noteworthy, and serves well to engage the player in the world which Underground Studio has so carefully crafted.

A piece of art that reads more like an amazing romance novel than a porn game. My highest recommendations.

It's most certainly a great game, but the longer I play it, the more there's one especially GLARING issue.

The dev LOVES some good melodrama. Absolutely loves it. The big issue is, is that they also love dragging that melodrama for as long as fucking possible. The greatest example, in my mind, is the MC's ex-wife, Allison. She will bring up the fact the MC cheated in every conversation. Every. Single. Conversation. I mean if I was in her position, hey, I'd be mad too, but she will literally make a snide remark about the MC's "girlfriends", and then say that the MC shouldn't talk about their relationship when they should be focusing on their daughter. It's as if the dev doesn't even know they're just filling Allison's dialogue with the same shit over and over and over again.

The same can be said for multiple other characters. I could theorise about WHY the dev does it: a desire to increase or emphasise tension; the characters having few noticeable personality traits and so the dev just repeats the same traits ad nauseum; the belief that this makes sex scenes with LIs more impactful; just general laziness. Could be one, could be two, could be all of them. Either way, the more it happens, the more annoying it becomes.

Visually it's great, there's little to no grammatical or spelling errors, the sex scenes are hot, there's very little to complain about. But the fact is the more I think about the story, the more I am convinced that maybe 20% of it is almost entirely meaningless. It's certainly ironic that for a game where the concept is (supposedly) around drag racing, the longer the story goes, the slower it gets. There's only so much boring conversations between the MC and his best friend that I can take before I just start skimming the utterly meaningless dialogue.

Incredible game! This one reminds me of one of the best game I have played recently "It takes two". The plot is really engaging with beautiful characters. It has everything needed to be one of the best adult games in this site.

Visuals: 4.5/5. Great renders, diverse cast, something to please everyone

Story: 4.5/5. Interesting "flavor" to the story with the street racing stuff. Even if I'm not particularly into cars, it gets extra points not another standard woke-up-from-a-coma-and-want-to-bang-my-relatives or variations thereof (not that there's anything wrong with those, but they're not particularly creative)

Dialogue: 3/5. This is where it loses a couple points to me. There's just *so* *much* *text*. Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick? The dev could have cut down the text by 50% and it would still be a lot. At some point I started fast forwarding through everything and just backing up whenever something seemed interesting

"Adult": 3.5/5. Like I said, LIs are diverse and I like where stuff is going, but two episodes in, the pace is pretty glacial so I'm a bit disappointed with the limited amount of sex so far. This could change to 5/5 depending on future episodes, but given the emphasis on dialogue, I actually think that's unlikely

Overall 4/5. It's a good game. It just has a lot more potential than it's showing in its current state, IMHO, but keep up the great work!

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

At present, the works most looking forward to the follow-up development, in terms of the first two chapters, the number of people shaping is very successful, interesting small game, professional racing story background, sexy modeling, please put on steam as soon as possible, full marks!

Good game! especially in terms of the plot and racing animations, the sex scenes are also impressive... The ending really intrigued me, the question is, what was Mc’s opponent doing there? this is really interesting, we'll wait for the next update!