VN - Ren'Py - Race of Life [Ep. 3.2 Extra Fix3] [Underground Studio]

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!

A pretty fun and good-looking VN. It has drama, romance, sex, and action accompanied by great and vibrant visuals with an interesting setting focused on illegal street racing and personal drama.

The writing though while mostly well-written can be at times a bit too much with the pseudo-science and technobabble that feels often dragged out and academic speech that feels like it should be parody but is played out straight. And some comic relief characters like MC's best buddy feel unnecessarily exaggerated. But other than that the story, most of the characters and interactions with them, and the overall presentation of the game are fun. And the racing feature itself is implemented pretty well.

Overall while the game isn't perfect I enjoyed it, although the writing could use some improvement.

This one really started spicy, turned sad with full of emotions then into redemption chad dad — outstanding visuals, animations, a well-paced plot, fantastic humor, attractive female characters, engaging side characters like Coop, unexpected drama, and not a dull moment throughout. The choices are impactful! Racing gameplay is simple but serves it purpose, so does the phone. Love it!

Alison from episode 1 to 2. Day and night!

I strongly recommend this.

Great VN so far. The renders look really nice, the sex scenes (animated) are super hot, the characters are all well written and not completely one dimensionnal as they often are in other VNs and the story though it seems a typical action movie scenario adds some drama and humor to steer away from a purely testosterone filled ambiance.

Amazing title. This is a gem in the making. A really promising start with top-notch visuals and animations, good pace, excellent humor, crazy hot chicks, likable side characters, drama that hits when least expecting, can't say anything bad about it, because there is not a dull moment in it. Choices are very good, and they actually matter! I love small touches like when with choices the atmosphere changes background music gets more flirty or serious depends on your choices - e.g. with Jasmine in lab. More people need to play this fantastic game and support the developer if they can.

Awesome art and animations, nice soundtracks, and characters who really know how to banter – but the best part? The story is top-notch, and playing it is fun. Plus, there's a bunch of love interests, and let's be real, they all hot af especially Veronica! Shame her personality is a little over protective, but hey you cant have it all.

Surpassed my expectations by a mile!

This is a straight up banger. Yes.. the 5 star reviews are legit.
Not only is the animation and art top notch.. it's a well made game. I wish more creators can catch up to this. I hope it doesn't get abandoned.

Incredible. For a moment I forgot it's only ep. 2 and was disappointed because of the abrupt ending. But, talking about what the game has to offer:

- Lots of animated porn, because it's still a porn game that doesn't forget about that fact, characters are good looking, faces are not creepy; you won't have ~8 hours long reading pauses between 2 scenes.
- - funny that right below my review is a review that somewhat contradicts this point. But maybe I've just seen worse??... didn't feel like he told. Maybe the context was also good enough to make sex scenes look better for me.
- Captivating story, something in between Breakind Bad and Initial D, though the atmosphere generally is not that dark. I want more.
- - Though it felt like ok to skip some dialogue parts or read through them "diagonally".
- Races are actually minigames of some sort, while they don't really go hard, I actually appreciate them that way and the fact that they are.
- There definetely is branching, I'm yet to understand on how it works and what I've missed out.
- MC is not a clown (unless you want him to be so in some choices lol).

Outclassing 99% of VN content uploaded on this site. Even with what it has now it's decent, but the plot totally needs to be finished. Hope to see it fully released, there's a Steam link, so I feel like it may even not be abandoned like most of such cases. Still 4.5/5

Interesting VN, nice story, really good visuals... there are no dialogue options but some branching story-line choices... too bad this is only episode 2 and as it is, there are only 11 lewd scenes to unlock in total (i've unlocked 6 scenes during single playthrough, due to mutually exclusive choices and i really don't feel like playing again to unlock the rest, as it took me more than 4 hours to read through everything, and even though the girls look hot, lewd scenes are mostly vanilla boring, there isn't much choice as to sexual positions or sex acts and all mostly end in creampie or swallowing (no cumshot, not many choices as to where to cum.) I feel like too much effort was put into text ( boring walls of text from pointless side characters) but really not much into what is bread and butter of every adult game - hot and diverse sex scenes with different fetishes. There are so many cute faces and there is like 1 (optional) facial scene ... the only titjob scene is performed by the girl with the smallest titties in game (and it ends not in cumshot on her tits but in her swallowing)... most girls also quickly undress and sex scenes are vanilla naked.

[Version Reviewed: Ep. 2 Extra New]

What I liked:

+ Premise: An AVN about car racing. What's not to like?

+ Story: The story has three primary plots; the treatment of MC's daughter, MC's doctorate research and the car racing. As well as a secondary plot in saving Maggie's mom. While one might think that the story can be convoluted (especially in the future), I believe that the writers have been able to allocate a good split in focus on the story elements, so far. I do hope that the same continues in the future.

+ Characters: The character that I would like to talk about at first would be the MC himself. The writing has helped the MC become a likable character but someone that we would easily acknowledge is an asshole (atleast at the beginning). The nuance in the MC's character already puts the game apart from most of the AVNs out there. The second character that I would like to talk about is MC's ex-wife. While most AVNs tend to portray the ex-wife/gf as the devil herself, RoL manages to bring out her bad qualities while still managing to keep her as an interesting love interest. There's a whole bunch of other interesting characters like Lilly, Jasmine, Natalya, Maggie, etc. I'm not a big fan of either the best friend or MC's current gf tho.

+ Art: Excellent detail. Unique looking characters. Some beautiful cars too.

+ Animations: Great animations both lewd and otherwise.

+Re-playability: Lot of variables in the game. Had fun playing the different romance paths.

+ Mini game mechanics: I loved the racing game mechanics. It's not too complicated while allowing the player to have a little fun.

What I'm indifferent / undecided about:

= Romance: Too early to give an opinion on it. I lost interest in MC's current gf quickly while the ex-wife was an instant favorite. Focusing on Jasmine helped in building her character in Ep 2. I hope the same happens for Nat and Maggie.

= Music: Couple of good soundtracks. Usually regular music. Nothing to complain about.

= Dialogues: Most of the dialogues relating to both racing as well as MC's science project had gone over my head. There is an index on the phone app (of the game), but it feels like a chore to read everything to understand a dialogue. Perhaps, some dumbed-down hints would be useful. Can't really say it's a negative as it might improve the realism for petrolheads.

Overall it's an excellent game from Underground Studio. I was a big fan of their abandoned game. I hope the devs remain in good health and manage to complete this one. I give it a 9/10.

I struggle with whether to give this game a 4 or 5 star. In terms of story, renders, choice paths, character variation (both in personality and body proportions), animations... it really is top shelf stuff. I'm definitely looking forward to future chapters/releases! So why would I consider taking away a star? Because frankly some of the dialogue is just nauseating. Like the writer is trying to prove he's super smart but really just sounds a bit like they've spent too much time reading academia papers and felt they needed to copy said papers into the VN. For the average reader, this is just click throughs. Sort of those moments when you just want a TLDR. It'd be fine if it happened on rare occasion, like during the ball scene where he's trying to impress potential donators, but between the car talk, the project talk, the medical talk....it's just too overwhelming at times and could really use a bit of toning down.

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.