Keri Racing Review

The world of Keri Racing is full of bird-raising farmers looking to make ends meet and possibly a name for themselves. Managing a farm while training and racing giant chicken-things isn’t exactly easy, but it’s rewarding work. At least it would be if it were really a thing. Even though it’s not, it’s easy enough to lose track of time between all the crop tending and Keri feeding.

Resources in Keri Racing come in two distinct categories: food and cash. Food is grown on plots of farmland, and yields higher numbers when more expensive crops are planted. This food, in turn, can be used to feed (and thus level up) Keri or to supply the farm’s businesses. The businesses require food to function, but once they’re done processing it they can pay out some fairly hefty sums of coins. The coins can then be used to purchase new buildings, outfits for Keri, or planting even more crops. It’s cyclical in nature, yes, but the payoffs get larger and larger as players progress. And this is all before they take their own Keri to the track and start racing for money, glory, or even justice. Yes, town ne’er-do-wells can be “caught” by winning races against them. All I can do is shrug and move on.

The good sits right alongside the bad in Keri Racing, sometimes in a 1:1 ratio. For example, while the animations are incredibly simply the illustrations are actually fairly cute and colorful. Likewise, while the farm can be something of a cluttered mess sitting in a misaligned grid which is a nightmare to line structures up in - seriously, the borders are at 90-degree angles when everything actually in the plot is viewed at an isometric 45-degree angle - getting around is as simple as tapping and the chose player avatar even “teleports” over lengthy distances in order to save time.

The same give-and-take applies to the races as well. The endless runner-style mini-game (tap to jump, tap the whip button to speed up) is a pleasant distraction from the hum drum of the hum drum and is plagued by unfair enemy racer AI (teleporting into the lead? Really?), questionable obstacle placement, and can sometimes move just a bit too fast. I’m not too crazy about the floaty jumping, either.

I do believe that the good outweighs the bad, however. And while Keri Racing may not be the most polished or viscerally compelling Freemium title on the App Store, it does the genre right. It’s probably not something that will draw in too many older iOS gamers but I could definitely see the kiddies loving it.