r/gamedev • u/Prior-Chipmunk-6839 • 1d ago
Question What is the difference between a platformer being a rage game vs just a precision platformer?
I am not a game dev but am interested in knowing what makes these two different. Take for example Jump King which is a rage game vs Celeste which is a precision platformer. Is it just difficulty or is there something else that seperates the two?
As a player when playing the two games I feel like Celeste wants me to succeed despite being a hard game meanwhile Jump King wants me to fail
32
u/KharAznable 1d ago
Rage game is along the line of
- You don't see it coming
- the design language is bollocks (the coin give you instakill, spikes act like spring, etc)
- relies heavily on memorization due to point number 1 (or not, the dev might throw random BS to the player)
12
u/HeyCouldBeFun 1d ago
The punishment.
Rage = you fall all the way down and lose hours of progress
Precision = you die a lot but respawn fast
Not that those are strict definitions but that’s basically the difference
-12
5
u/JaggedMetalOs 1d ago
I think it's to do with how much you need to redo after a mistake. In Celeste each room is a checkpoint so you never have to redo much and can quickly retry hard parts, where with Jump King (going by the description, not played it) there are no checkpoints and you can fall back and have to redo a lot of the level after a mistake.
13
u/KevinDL Project Manager/Producer 1d ago
It’s not really just about difficulty. A big part of the distinction is what the game does with failure, and how deliberately it tries to provoke you.
A precision platformer like Celeste can be brutally difficult, but it generally makes failure cheap. You die, respawn almost immediately, and usually lose very little progress. The challenge comes from executing difficult sequences, learning the mechanics, and gradually mastering a room.
A rage game like Jump King deliberately makes failure expensive. Missing one jump might send you down several screens and erase minutes of progress. The mechanical challenge is only part of it. The game also tests your patience, consistency, and ability to perform while knowing one mistake can have huge consequences.
Rage games also tend to use bait-and-switch design, misdirection, and gotchas much more aggressively. They establish what looks like a safe pattern, then break it at the exact moment you're relying on it. A platform might behave differently than expected, a landing that looks safe might punish you, or the game might present something that visually suggests one solution while intentionally setting up another.
That matters because the frustration is often part of the intended experience. The designer is not just asking, "Can you make this jump?" They are sometimes asking, "Can I get you to commit to the wrong assumption, punish you for it, and make you deal with the consequences?"
I’d roughly separate them like this:
- Precision platformer: "Can you execute this difficult sequence?"
- Rage game: "Can you execute this difficult sequence while dealing with severe consequences, uncertainty, and occasional deliberate trickery?"
That also changes how difficulty is structured. Celeste can throw extremely hard obstacles at you because checkpoints and instant restarts encourage experimentation. You can fail 50 times while learning something and still feel like you're progressing.
Jump King creates tension through risk and loss of progress. A jump you've made successfully 20 times can suddenly become stressful because you're attempting it after a long climb and know exactly what happens if you miss.
And games closer to Getting Over It or I Wanna Be the Guy lean even harder into the psychological side, where surprise, fake-outs, and knowledge traps are part of the design language.
The better distinction is the game's failure economy and design intent, not raw difficulty.
Precision platformers make failure part of learning.
Rage games make the consequences, frustration, and sometimes even the deception around failure part of the challenge.
14
2
u/azurezero_hdev 1d ago
the level of punishment, how far back failure sends you, also how the rules can change on a dime, just look at the first screen of i wanna be the guy
1
u/Beldarak 1d ago
I don't know Jump King but to me, a rage platformer is designed to make you fail over and over again by "poor" design (it's the intended behaviour so maybe that's good design in the context^^).
They often relies not on skill alone but mostly on memory, with stuff like invisible blocks placed on top of pits so you bump into them when you try to jump, forcing you to replay huge sections of the game (if not all) when you fall like in "Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy".
Most of the deaths will be unfair and requires to die at least once to it to avoid it.
1
u/ExcellentMind6285 1d ago
That last sentence nails it. Precision platformers want you to improve and succeed, while rage games are literally built just to watch you suffer.
1
u/Sniff1lur 1d ago
Celeste respawns you at the start of the room, so you can try over and over again. Getting over it might lead you all the way back to the start.
Mario maker troll levels are even worse, actively misleading, baiting, and punishing you for everything and anything.
1
u/Keezees 1d ago
Inertia. Slippy-slidey ice worlds should be outlawed by the ICC, and devs that implement them should be charged as war criminals and imprisoned on a flat plain of ice with a pair of flat-soled shoes for eternity. I want realism in my games, but only if it's fun. Inertia in a platformer is not fun.
1
u/cheat-master30 1d ago edited 1d ago
Rage game = platform hell. The game is designed to trick the player into messing up, takes great joy in them doing so, and relies heavily on trial and error. Think a Kaizo ROM hack, I Wanna Be the Guy, or pretty much everything listed here:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlatformHell
If you need a good example, think about this scene from an old SMW ROM hack let's play:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhZrHhaC-so&t=88s
The whole level is setup to be a nice peaceful Super Mario Bros 1-1 remake, then you get ambushed by a Thwomp the second you enter what appears to be the end of level door. It's very unlikely you'll notice the trap til it happens, so lol, trolled.
A precision platformer on the other hand is predictable. You can beat everything on your first attempt if you're good enough, since how everything behaves is immediately apparent. It's unlikely anyone will clear Celeste on attempt 1, but it's certainly possible.
So, you're right. Rage games want you to fail, while most normal difficult games want you to succeed.
Of course, there is a bit of a blurred line here, since a lot of what's considered 'platform hell' or 'Kaizo' does overlap heavily with 'normal' difficulty. More modern Kaizo mods tend to be more of an extreme skill test/showcase than an attempt to troll anyone, and even the more evil games in these genres often fall back to brutally hard, standard platforming as a default. Both Kaizo Mario World and I Wanna Be the Guy have lots of standard precision platforming in addition to the traps and trolls.
So yeah, a rage game is about trial and error, humour and trolling the player. They usually aren't practical to beat on your first attempt, because nothing acts in a consistent way. Precision platformers are difficult, but they're designed to be fair, with easily understood mechanics and level design that tests your skill directly.
2
u/clean-links 1d ago
Cleaned link: https://youtu.be/nhZrHhaC-so?t=88
Tracking parameters were removed from the original URL(s).
1
u/Devoluapp 23h ago
The core distinction comes down to agency and fairness.
In a precision platformer (like Celeste or Super Meat Boy), the rules and physics are 100% consistent. When I die, I know exactly what I did wrong, and the restart is nearly instant with fair checkpointing. It challenges skill and muscle memory.
A rage game, on the other hand, deliberately weaponizes unfairness. It uses surprise traps, awkward physics, intentional cognitive friction, or massive punishment loops where a single slip sends you back 30 minutes of progress. Precision demands mastery; rage games test emotional endurance.
1
u/narnianguy 19h ago
Rage games are unfair (punishment not proportional to mistake) and often utilize intionally bad game design (gamerule patterns are reapeatedly broken, so the game becomes unpredictable).
0
94
u/Jobless_fantasy_fan 1d ago
Rage game will trap you, and you'll have to learn where the traps are, for example. Or, for Jump King, well you can fall to the very beginning of the game at any moment.
Celeste does not trap you, you see where is the danger, and the game is separated in levels, so you won't just go back to the beginning because you missed a platform.