Pogostuck: Rage With Your Friends is a deceptively simple yet ruthlessly punishing platformer that thrives on frustration, repetition, and the raw thrill of triumph. Developed by Hendrik Felix Pohl, the game follows in the footsteps of titles like Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy, offering an intentionally punishing experience where progress is hard-won and failure is both inevitable and spectacular. But what makes Pogostuck stand out is how it blends physics-based movement, bright and cartoonish visuals, and real-time multiplayer into a chaotic but strangely addictive formula.

The premise is straightforward: you're a little character stuck on a pogo stick, trying to climb a massive, continuous mountain-like obstacle course filled with tricky ledges, tight jumps, and treacherous angles. The only mechanics at your disposal are jumping, leaning, and spinning in midair. These might sound basic on paper, but Pogostuck turns them into a delicate dance of momentum and timing. There’s no button for precision—only raw input and physics—and that’s where the game's identity is forged. It demands total mastery of its unintuitive movement system and punishes the slightest lapse in focus with brutal, often hilarious falls that can send players back several minutes’ worth of progress.

The difficulty curve is steep, and the game doesn’t apologize for it. There are no checkpoints, no handholding, and very few forgiving moments. It is designed to be rage-inducing, but also deeply satisfying. The level design feels almost sadistically clever; it teaches you by humiliating you, rewarding perseverance over precision. Each segment of the mountain presents its own unique challenge, from slippery slopes to narrow ledges that require pixel-perfect positioning. It’s a design philosophy that will either click with players or completely alienate them. Those who embrace the grind, however, often find themselves locked in for hours, chasing incremental improvements and celebrating even the smallest victories.

One of the most distinctive aspects of Pogostuck is its multiplayer integration. While it’s not competitive in the traditional sense, the presence of other players' avatars jumping alongside you in real-time creates a sense of community and shared suffering. You’ll often see dozens of players attempting the same jump, failing, restarting, and encouraging each other through quick chat messages or emojis. This transforms what could be a solitary, frustrating experience into a social event. Seeing another player finally make it past a notorious segment can be both motivating and demoralizing—proof that it’s possible, but also a reminder that you still haven’t done it yourself.

Visually, the game contrasts its punishing gameplay with cheerful, almost childlike aesthetics. Bright colors, cute character designs, whimsical hats, and sparkly effects give Pogostuck an approachable surface that belies its brutal mechanics. The world is filled with vibrant landscapes that shift as you climb higher—icy peaks, lush forests, lava flows—all presented in a stylized 2.5D art style that feels charming and chaotic in equal measure. These aesthetic touches serve to soften the blow of repeated failure, making the world at least feel inviting even when it’s actively trying to destroy your sanity.

Customization is another fun layer, offering unlockable cosmetics that include everything from silly hats and trail effects to entirely new characters. Most of these are tied to performance milestones, like reaching specific points in the game or completing a run within a certain time. This provides an additional motivation loop for players who enjoy grinding toward visible rewards. It also injects personality into multiplayer runs, allowing players to express themselves in a sea of bouncing avatars.

Performance-wise, the game is lightweight and smooth, running well on a wide range of machines. Load times are virtually non-existent, and reloading after a crash (whether technical or self-inflicted) is seamless. The physics engine, while intentionally challenging, is consistent—meaning that while the controls may feel slippery at first, they’re always reliable once mastered. The game rarely feels unfair in a technical sense; it’s the high skill ceiling and intentionally uncooperative mechanics that create the difficulty.

Perhaps the most important aspect of Pogostuck is how it distills the essence of perseverance into a digital form. It’s not a game for everyone—in fact, it’s probably not a game for most people. It is brutally hard, unapologetically repetitive, and often cruel in its design. But for those who find satisfaction in small victories, who see failure as a motivator rather than a deterrent, and who enjoy sharing in collective misery with others, Pogostuck offers a strangely beautiful, masochistic playground.

In the end, Pogostuck: Rage With Your Friends is more than just a rage game. It’s a psychological challenge, a skill-based mountain climb, and a social experiment all rolled into one. Its minimalist controls and maximalist difficulty won’t appeal to every gamer, but for those who fall into its rhythm, it becomes a strangely meditative and endlessly replayable journey of progress, collapse, and redemption. It’s a game about falling down hundreds of times and laughing at the absurdity of it all—and occasionally, reaching the top and knowing it was worth every agonizing second.

Rating: 8/10