Development update - 18.09.2026 (Patreon)

Hey everyone!

Another roughly 1.5 scenes are now finished animation-wise. 😄

I decided I'm going to try posting development updates a little more often. I know lately they've usually been coming around once a month, so let's see if I can improve that. They probably won't always be huge status updates, but I'd rather share smaller bits of progress more regularly than disappear for a month at a time.

I also read your comments under the previous post, and I wanted to touch on one thing briefly.

If I were making Race of Life without animations, I could probably release at least 2 updates a year at this point. But as many of you pointed out yourselves, animations are a huge part of games like this, even when they're not perfect. And honestly, I can't imagine the racing scenes without them at all - without animation, a big part of the whole concept of this game would lose its purpose. 😊

It's also the area where I feel I still have the most room to grow. With static renders, especially in Daz3D, you eventually reach a point where improvements become smaller and smaller unless you spend an enormous amount of extra time polishing every single image. That's something I still enjoy doing from time to time, but for the main game I'd rather put that extra time into animations, the story, scene logic, and making everything feel more alive.

I know that roughly one major update per around 9-12 months can feel like a long wait for some of you, and I completely understand that. At the same time, it's worth remembering that there isn't a large development team on the other side of the screen. We're a very small project, without a huge studio budget or dozens of people working on separate parts of the game.

I spend the majority of my time on Race of Life, but there are still limits I simply can't brute-force through without cutting corners somewhere. And I don't really want to do that.

I could make the updates smaller, reduce the number of renders, cut animations, simplify scenes or stop experimenting with new things - and development would definitely move faster. But I genuinely think the game would lose one of its strongest qualities in the process.

The funny part is that every time I find a way to speed something up, I usually discover another thing I want to improve. 😅 Moving animation work from Daz3D to Blender is probably the best example. It slowed me down while learning it, but it also opened up possibilities I simply didn't have before. The same goes for adding proper sound to animations and improving the way scenes are presented.

So I guess that's just how this project keeps evolving.

And you are very much part of that journey with us. Your support is the reason we can keep working on it this way, experimenting, improving things and trying to make each episode better than the last. I really do appreciate that.

And the good news is that I'm slowly getting closer to the end of the animation-heavy part of development, which makes me very happy.

Also, if you have any questions for us, feel free to drop them below! The only exception is the release date.😄

My answer there has always been the same: when we're close enough to the finish line to give you a date we genuinely believe in, we'll give you one.

I really don't like announcing dates far in advance and then having to explain why something unexpected pushed them back. I'm a player too, and I know exactly how disappointing it feels when you're waiting for something and the date keeps moving. I'd much rather announce it later and be confident we can actually deliver.

I also want to do another big numbers/statistics update soon. Ideally I'd like to wait until all the animations are finished so I can give you the complete picture, but we'll see!

See you in October!