What is a rage game? A short definition with 5 examples
A rage game is a video game built to frustrate you on purpose. The definition, the main types, five examples and why people keep playing them.
IceGaming TeamPublished
4 min read
A rage game is a video game designed to frustrate the player on purpose. The difficulty is the joke and the point: traps you cannot see coming, controls that fight you, or one mistake that undoes ten minutes of progress. You get angry, you laugh, and you press restart.
We make one, so we think about this a lot. Here is a plain definition, the main kinds, five examples and an honest view on what separates a good rage game from a bad one.
The definition
Wikipedia puts it this way: “A rage game is a video game designed to frustrate the player, often characterized by unfair difficulty, unpredictable mechanics or a high reliance on memorization.”
The same article separates rage games from other hard genres, like masocore games, kaizo levels and precision platformers. Those are hard but fair: they test your skill. A rage game is allowed to cheat a little, and it wants you to notice.
In short, a hard game asks “can you do this?”. The other kind asks “did you really think it would be that easy?”.
Three kinds of rage game
Most of them fall into one of three families. Some mix them.
The troll platformer
The level lies. A floor drops, a spike appears where there was none, the exit moves. You die once to learn each trick, then you beat it from memory. Syobon Action (Cat Mario, 2007) is the classic example. Level Devil and our own Level Demon are recent ones.
The game with awkward controls
The world is fair, but your body is not. QWOP (2008) makes you run a race by controlling an athlete’s thighs and calves with four keys. The rage comes from your own clumsy hands.
The climb where a fall costs a lot
One mistake costs a lot of progress. In Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy (2017) you climb a mountain with a hammer, and a slip can send you back to the start. Jump King (2019) works the same way with jumps.
Five examples, from 2007 to today
| Game | Year | Kind | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Syobon Action | 2007 | Troll platformer | Windows, freeware |
| QWOP | 2008 | Awkward controls | Browser, free |
| Getting Over It | 2017 | Climb with big falls | PC, phones, paid |
| Level Devil | 2023 | Troll platformer | Browser and phones |
| Level Demon (ours) | 2026 | Troll platformer with a daily level | Browser, Android coming |
Getting Over It went to over 2.7 million players through the October 2017 Humble Monthly, according to its Wikipedia page. So this is no niche joke. Many people enjoy being annoyed by a game.
Is Level Demon a rage game?
Yes, by that definition, and we built it that way. Every level lies. The hero, Short Fuse, is a matchstick whose flame grows with every death in the room.
But we follow one rule that not every game in the genre follows: the first death may feel unfair, the second should not. Traps are scripted, not random. The game runs on a fixed physics tick of 60 steps per second, so the same moves give the same result on every device. Our test bot beats every level before it ships. That makes Level Demon a rage game you can learn, closer to a puzzle once you have seen the trick.
There is also a daily level, the daily demon. It drops every night at 22:00 Paris time and everyone plays the same rooms, so you can compare deaths with friends.
Why people play a rage game
Our take, as people who make one:
- The laugh. A good trap is a joke with a punchline, and you are the one who walked into it.
- The short loop. A death costs a second. Restart is instant, so “one more try” is always cheap.
- The win. Beating a room you died in twenty times feels better than beating an easy one.
The bad kind breaks the second rule. If a death throws away ten minutes, or the trap is random, the anger stops being fun. We wrote more about this balance in our list of games like Level Devil.
FAQ
Is a rage game the same as a hard game?
No. A hard game is difficult but fair. This genre is built to frustrate you, often with traps you cannot predict on the first try.
What is a good first rage game?
A short one with instant restarts. Level Demon runs free in a browser, and each room takes seconds to retry. See our FAQ for the controls.
Why is it called a rage game?
Because players get angry, often on camera. Syobon Action spread through online video commentary and Jump King through Twitch streams, according to their Wikipedia pages.
The short version
A rage game frustrates you on purpose, then lets you win. The best ones are short, funny and learnable. If you want to test the theory, play Level Demon for five minutes and count your deaths.
