Race with Ryan Review

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Fast Facts

Title: Race with Ryan
Developer: 3DClouds
Publisher: Outright Games
Website: https://www.outrightgames.com/racewithryan
Genre: Kart Racer
Platform: PC, PS4, XBOX & Nintendo Switch
Age Rating: 3-6
Release Date: Nov 1st 2019
Price: £ – Rapid Reviews was very kindly provided with a review code for this title.

A namesake game for me, a YouTuber’s game for the kids. If you don’t know who Ryan is, then you’ve either not got kids, or you’ve been hiding under a rock.

Ryan is the star of “Ryan’s World”, a YouTube sensation who has 22.9m subscribers, 1,593 videos and a whopping 34,553,401,328 video views. He also has a second channel, Ryan’s Family Reviews, with 5m subscribers. This 8-year-old is set for life!

So, how do you capitalise on this success and make even more money? Well, you release a video game of course. Is this game targeted at me? Not really. So I gave it to my kids to play.

Race Time

Race with Ryan is a kart racer, similar to Mario Kart and Sonic Racing. You zip around a track, collecting power-ups (mystery eggs) and ultimately aim to win by outracing your opponent. Get items like Burger Shields, footballs, paper aeroplanes, sticky slime and much more. You can play as Ryan in his police car, but my son’s favourite is obviously the garbage truck. There is a Career mode with a tutorial or a 2-4 player split-screen mode.

As with most games that follow this structure, you play the game to unlock the different drivers and the different locations.  

The Career lasts maybe 2 hours, depending on how good you are. The kids weren’t great to start, so there was a lot of spinning about and going in the wrong direction. However, what isn’t great, at least for me as an adult is the paltry amount of tracks available. You play the same 6 tracks over and over, but to add variety, you also play them backwards. You still have to unlock them first!

This probably drove my kids to boredom, they enjoy the variety of levels that other racing games offer. Their favourite part is usually who picks which level they race on next.

Magical Locations

The tracks are actually pretty good to look at. They are clearly targeted towards children, lots of bright colours and some things going on in the deep background, such as racing on a track in Ryan’s bedroom with the bedroom as the deep backdrop.

Each level has a brief cartoon introduction and can bring that childish element to the game adding an extra little layer, this lost its charm about 4 levels in though.

The audio, however, is pretty poor. Generic sounds and audio levels are misbalanced, even the voice-overs from Ryan seem tacked on, like an audio segment recorded after the fact to add Ryan into the game.

For the Kids

The best mechanic this game has going for it is the adjustable controls that offer an easier way into the game for younger players. If your child is finding it hard to control the movement of the vehicle whilst also accelerating, you can switch on smart-steering and auto-accelerate. Smart steering really helps children grow into the game and learn the mechanics easily. It just doesn’t guarantee victory. 

Finish Line

Limited variety of tracks and audio inconsistencies don’t really justify the PS4 digital price tag of £39.99 / $39.99 but if you can get a copy for £20-25 you’re onto a great game for the little ones. Looking around the price for each console differs hugely, so it’s worth savvy shopping if you’re looking to pick it up.

Overall I can see this game has great potential, maybe a future update with more variety of tracks and better audio balance would make this a great kart racing contender for the kids.

Rapid Reviews Rating

You can purchase Race With Ryan from the PlayStation Store at the following link: https://store.playstation.com/en-gb/product/EP3678-CUSA15741_00-RWRBASEGAME00001