Ah, rage games. The games that are capable of making you want to throw your computer out of a high-rise window as much as they’re capable of making you laugh like a deranged lunatic on the verge of your final breakdown. They captivate with their frustration, and they urge you onwards by being designed in a way that is intentionally infuriating. 

Whether you love to hate them or hate to love them, I think we can all agree that we both love and hate them in equal measure. They’re popular because they’re difficult, and they often end up going viral for the meme-level reactions of players who record themselves playing. 

Regardless, they keep cropping up and, like a masochist with no willpower, I somehow end up playing every single one of them and screaming at my PC like it’s mortally offended me. As such, I’m always on the lookout for new rage games to enrage myself with, and I always tell myself that I can do it calmly, I can get through this, I will not scream or curse. 

Spoiler alert: ‘Calm’ goes out the window, I always rage quit, and I curse like a drunk sailor. 

Anyway, here are five indie rage games that are either already released or coming soon. If you want to vent some real-life frustrations into a virtual experience, these are great.

Going Up

Going Up doesn’t look like a rage game at first glance. It looks like an adorable 2D platformer with cute enemies that wiggle as they pace back and forth in a lush green pixel landscape. But then you realize that those cute critters are out to kill you, and the platforms progressively get smaller, and then they start moving, and there are no checkpoints. There is no forgiveness here, only rage. 

The aim of Going Up is to, well, go up. The setting changes as you climb, if you can make it that far, and there are always challenging jumps that threaten to send you right back to the very beginning, regardless of how far you’ve climbed. If you’re bad at platformers (guilty), Going Up is going to make you want to tear your hair out. Even if you’re good at platformers, you’re likely to struggle with this one. 

But that difficulty is all based on the genius of the game’s design, and it’s all testament to Outside Pixel’s talent in creating platformers. You can find Going Up on their Itch.io page, as well as other assets and games that they have worked on. 

Paddle Paddle Paddle

Do you have a friend or loved one who tests your patience on the best of days, and feel like getting some revenge disguised as a fun co-op rowing experience in a bizarre and hilarious world? Then let me introduce you to Paddle Paddle Paddle, a game that records just how many times you’ve failed to remind you of how inept you truly are. 

Paddle Paddle Paddle is a solo or co-op rowing game in which you have a very thin track on which to row, and it’s far too easy to fall directly off that track into the fiery pools of lava below. It all seems relatively easy until you realize that each paddle is controlled individually and even the smallest movement can send you spinning or flying off track, directly to your face-melting death. 

Developed by the evil genius that is Zoroarts, Paddle Paddle Paddle is set to release at some point in July of 2025, although there is no fixed date specified as of yet. Whenever the full game makes its entrance, there’s a demo to download and play in the meantime. 

Pikwip

While we’re on the topic of rage games that can drive an irrevocable wedge between you and your loved ones, if you want to destroy a relationship, then Pikwip is also a solid choice. Or, if you want to drive yourself nuts and feel like divorcing yourself despite that being a physical impossibility, you can play it solo.

Pikwip features two characters, joined by a rope, that need to scale the side of a mountain and various platforms. Each character is controlled individually, with one person using WASD and the other using arrows (or you doing both, if you’re playing solo), and if one of those characters jumps badly and falls, the other one gets dragged down with them.

If you want to play Pikwip, you’ll need to head to developer CookieCutter’s Itch.io page. On the plus side, Pikwip is an in-browser game, so you don’t even need to download any files before the rage can begin. 

PEAK

Whether you consider PEAK a rage game or not depends on two things: the amount of patience you possess and the type of friends you have. Depending on those two things, you can either experience a lovely wilderness hike, or a repeated encounter with death and/or a cursed scout master that you cannot escape unless you leap to your death. 

I jest, but honestly, the main rage-inducing aspect of PEAK is always going to be your own ineptitude, and potentially your own overconfidence. Getting to the top of the mountain gets progressively harder the higher you climb, and falling ends up being the least of your worries. Once you start dealing with the game incessantly trying to poison you in the Tropics or trying to melt you with lava in the Caldera, you’ll start to realize that throwing yourself to your death is pretty much the obvious choice. 

PEAK is developed by Landfall Games and was released in full on June 16, 2025. It’s worth noting that the map changes every day, so you’ll experience something entirely new whenever you play. 

Baby Steps

Bennett Foddy is back at it again, doing what he does best, and enraging the players of his games in such a way that they can’t help but appear in droves and love every second of the anger-inducing experience. Baby Steps is a game in which you walk, but you do it like a toddler who has never done it before, using controls that feel awkward at first. It’s a true learning-to-walk simulator. 

Navigating the world as Nate the basement-dweller is not an enjoyable experience initially. Each leg is manually controlled, with one button lifting the leg and another moving it forward or backward. You’ll slip, trip, fall, spin, cry, scream, want to die, and then you’ll… Suddenly figure out what you’re doing and find that there are a lot of things to love in the world of Baby Steps. 

Don’t get me wrong, you’ll still fall a lot, but you’ll always get back up and that’s the essence of perseverance in a nutshell. If you want to play Baby Steps, there’s a demo available to play right now and the full game is set to release on September 8, 2025.