Born Race

Review

Isn’t life amazing when you think about it! We were all launched the same way and we all had to swim upstream as fast as we could, accompanied by not one or two, but up to 500 million potential brothers and sisters. All with one common goal! To reach the super comfy lounge, rest and evolve over 9 months, and then voila, here you are. I know, it is a far-fetched explanation, but it was the only one that came to me when many years ago, my son asked, “Where do babies come from, Dad?” It’s usually a discussion that occurs unexpectedly; awkward, funny as you try to keep a straight face, and a discussion that never seems to end as your child keeps coming up with more and more questions.  Thankfully, for the upcoming generation of parents, all they might need to do is to turn on their computer and have a quick go at Born Race with their children.

Born Race is a top-down educational puzzle-platformer game developed and self-published by Fabio Naspolini on the 5^th of April 2021 on the Steam platform.

What a fun and interesting little game this is, and I would like to congratulate everyone for winning their own race, whenever it was.

The game consists of 5 stages, each one with three levels. Four of the five stages will have a boss fight at the end, while one, the third stage, will be like a parkour type of setup where you have to get to the end as fast as you can without dying. There are four sperm characters (I am giggling, I was going to write tadpoles) and each of them has a special ability. For instance, Mike is super-fast, athletic and a future NBA player while Beth is slower but can teleport from one place to another. Tommy is a bit of a geek and when he finds his super cap, nothing can hurt him for 5 seconds or so.  And Sammy, well, she’s clever as she can find hidden walls and move through them. However, only Mike will be ready for selection on your first attempt at life. The other three will unlock when you successfully finish the race with Mike.

What you have to do in each level is to find the key that will unlock the padlock and therefore move you to the next section. As you progress through the stages, you’ll encounter obstacles such as viruses, diaphragms, morning-after pills and a few other things. If you touch a virus or a diaphragm, you’ll lose health. If you lose health three times in the row, the race of life will end there. Don’t worry, you’ll restart at the beginning of the current level if you die. You’ll also find a few perks in each of the levels. There are three in total, but you can only hold two on you at any given time. You can throw the smiling tablet (vitamin) into the green viruses to eliminate them. It will have no effect whatsoever on the red viruses, so be careful with those little buggers. The hormone perk gives you the ability to destroy the dark green blocks. These blocks usually have goodies hidden behind them such as a heart which will regenerate your health, or even keys. But without the hormone perk on you, you’ll be stuffed. Remember, you can only have two perks on you at any given time. Then there’s the DNA perk. With this perk, you can swim faster when you activate it, and you can also move blocks in the Sokoban puzzle rooms, and also move the strange growing green thingy that explodes when it gets too big. So, expect to pick up and drop these perks more than once in each level from the second stage onwards.     

The puzzles are pretty easy to solve but they are a very good addition to the game and you need to do them as you’ll receive a key when you complete them.

There are also three vitamin capsules to find in every stage, including the parkour stage, which is a bit tricky and fun.

In terms of the boss fights, well, they are fun but pretty easy to win when you understand their movement sequences. It won’t take too long for you to move onto the next stage.

The replayability comes from the fact that you can play with four different characters, but the levels themselves will not change too much. The differences will be the super cap icons displayed throughout the levels when you play with Tommy, the teleport icons while playing Beth, and the fact that you can go through some walls with Sammy. You’ll have a fun story for each of the characters but that’s about it.

The graphics are good, and you can play the game with a gamepad (which I recommend) or with the keyboard, with which you can also rebind the keys if you wish to do so. At this stage, the game is available in English and Portuguese. I must say that I went into this game with an open mind, and I was pleasantly surprised with my experience playing Born Race. It’s an interesting concept for all ages; educational, pretty fun to play, a good price point and a few giggles along the way. I must say that the music is annoying after a while, but thankfully you can turn it off in the settings.

Review written by THE CPT FROGGY for Zeepond.com

Born Race Steam Store Page