User Guide — The Rage Co.

How to Play

The loop, the controls, the difficulties, and how to survive a shift at The Rage Co.

The Rage Co. title terminal on a beige CRT monitor. — You report for your first shift. The terminal is a beige CRT; the whole game plays out on its phosphor screen.

The premise

You're the newest hire at The Rage Co., a factory that runs on cruelty. Each shift is a run — a randomised sequence of stations. Every station is a small puzzle with an obvious-looking control and a hidden catch. The obvious control is a trap. The real solution is something you have to notice.

The whole game is built on one rule: unfair the first time, trivial the second. You are expected to fail a station the first time you meet it. The skill is learning each catch, then executing 60-odd of them in a row, fast, without slipping.

One mistake ends the run. There are no lives. A single wrong click — or the timer hitting zero — fires you, resets the run, and reshuffles the stations. The only thing that carries over is your Times Fired count.

Controls

The Rage Co. is played entirely with the mouse. There are no keyboard controls in a station — just the pointer.

Interact

Left-click

Hold / drag

Hold left button

Menus & prompts

Clickorany key

Back / leave

Esc

Some stations want a single click, some a double-click, some a click-and-hold, and a few want you to drag. Part of each puzzle is working out which.
The game runs fullscreen. Your click lands exactly where the cursor is — if something isn't responding, you're aiming at the wrong thing, not fighting the controls.

Clocking in: difficulty

From the main menu you pick a difficulty before each new run. Difficulty only changes how much time each station gives you — the puzzles and their catches are the same.

Easy

The most time per station. Best for learning catches. Clock-in second chances appear most often.

Medium

A noticeable squeeze. You need to recognise the catch quickly, not puzzle it out from scratch.

Hard

Tight. Hesitation is fatal. Clock-in cards are rare.

Rage

Barely any time, and no second chances at all. This is the intended endgame.

Continue / clock-in cards. On the easier difficulties the factory occasionally grants a clock-in card — a one-off reprieve that lets you resume a run instead of starting over. They never appear on Rage, and rarely on Hard. Don't rely on them.

A puzzle station mid-shift, with its header naming the task. — Every station names itself in the lighter header panel, with a one-line instruction. Read both — the instruction is honest, even when the station is not.

Anatomy of a station

The header sits in the lighter panel at the top: the station name and a single line telling you the goal.
The timer runs down from the moment the station appears. The tick speeds up as it drains; the last few seconds bring a siren. When it hits zero, you're fired.
The catch is the whole game. The big obvious control usually does nothing, or does the wrong thing. Look for the small detail: a mislabelled key, a lying readout, a tiny switch, a control that's inverted.
Times Fired is shown on the menu and saved between sessions. It only ever goes up.

The golden rule, restated. If a station feels impossible, you haven't spotted the catch yet — you haven't hit an unfair wall. Every station is solvable in seconds once you know its trick. That gap between "impossible" and "trivial" is the entire experience.

A timed station with the clock running down. — Late in a run the stations chain together and the clock turns ruthless. Overtime stations always use the Rage timer.

Surviving a shift

These are principles, not answers — the fun is finding the catches yourself.

Distrust the obvious. The biggest, reddest, most inviting control on screen is nearly always the trap. Glance at it, then look for what it's distracting you from.
Read the instruction literally. It never lies. If it says "match the word, not the colour," it means exactly that — your own eyes are the obstacle.
Suspect every readout and label. Numbers, gauges, and key markings are routinely false. Trust physical behaviour (a tilting beam, a moving needle) over printed values.
Slow down to speed up. A couple of stations punish haste directly — one fires you for clicking too early, another's target flees a fast cursor. When something resists, try stillness.
Learn the order. The roster is reshuffled each run, but the catches don't change. Dying teaches you a station for free. Bank that knowledge and the next run is faster.
Expect the Gauntlet and Overtime. Late stations chain several actions with no pause and always run on the Rage clock. By then you should be executing from memory, not thinking.

It's meant to make you angry. The rage is the design, not a bug. Take the loss, learn the catch, clock back in. Your Times Fired count is a badge, not a failure.

Sound & settings

The game has title music, an in-shift playlist, and station sound effects — the quickening tick and the last-seconds siren are useful timing cues, so play with sound on if you can.
It runs fullscreen at your display's resolution. Press Esc to leave a screen or return to the menu.
Progress (your Times Fired and last difficulty) is saved automatically between sessions.

Stuck on the philosophy, not a specific station? That's the right kind of stuck. Tell us how a shift went — what enraged you most is exactly what we want to hear.