Agony
This horizontally-scrolling shoot 'em up features six long levels, all with detailed and mellow background graphics, aiming for a less hectic feel than contemporaries such as Project X. As a magician's apprentice, you have been turned into an owl to give you the best chance of destroying the many dark creatures to be faced, and thus discovering the secret of cosmic strength. These dark creatures include piranhas, giant ants and mosquitoes. Extra weapons and invincibility periods can be collected. The technical details include 3 layers of multi-directional parallax scrolling, background animation, and different title and in-game music.
SCREENSHOTS
PHYSICAL
HISTORY
Agony is a horizontally scrolling shooter with a surreal fantasy background. It was released by Psygnosis in 1992 for the Amiga. The game was developed by the company Art & Magic, which was originally known as Ordilogic Systems. Agony was the only Amiga game developed under the Art & Magic name, as after Agony was released, Art & Magic started developing arcade video games exclusively. Agony features a barn owl flying its way through six worlds filled with monsters. The owl uses various waves of echolocation which the player fires at the enemies.
Plot
According to the manual backstory, the sun-wizard master Acanthopsis discovers the "Cosmic Power" with a toll on his life. Before dying he teaches it to his disciples, Alestes and Mentor. Alestes has been transformed into a barn owl, and has to pass through Mentor's traps and monsters in order to reach the Cosmic Power.
Gameplay
Agony is a classic horizontal scrolling shoot'em up. Controlling the owl, the player has to navigate through six levels shooting at enemies, avoiding hazards and defeating mid-level and end-level bosses.
The player is able to power-up the owl's basic shot up to three times by collecting magic potions. In addition, two flying swords can be picked up and act as defense systems, that damage enemies and destroy enemies' projectiles. Also, a magic scroll provides temporary invincibility.
A single contact with an enemy or a projectile costs the player one of its three lives and part of its power-ups.
Upon getting the related scrolls, the player is also able to open a spell menu and choose between eight different temporary spells that provide various advantages, from extra firepower to defensive effects.
Music
The theme song is by Tim Wright, a classically themed, piano-led instrumental. The title song was adapted without giving him proper credit by the keyboardist of Dimmu Borgir in the song "Sorgens Kammer" for their Stormblåst album. The band did not know about this. Following several months of communication between Wright and Dimmu Borgir, and in a nod to the composer, the band did not include the track on a later re-recording of Stormblåst. The title song is also slightly different from the version that Wright originally submitted to Art & Magic. Franck Sauer advised Wright that he could source improved piano sounds for the piece, and requested permission to change them. Wright agreed, but did not hear the result before the game went to the final master, and consequently some notes within the piece were transposed; this 'mistake' was also covered by Dimmu Borgir.
Legacy
Around 2010, graphic artist Franck Sauer started to offer the game's binary files (ADF format) for free download on his personal webpage, making the game freeware.
On July 4, 2020, the programmer of the game, Yves Grolet, uploaded all his Amiga development files (which included full source code for Agony) to WeTransfer.
1CC RUNS
One-credit clears we point to as the benchmark for this game.
REVIEWS
Published elsewhere, collected here. Every score is the outlet's own, on the outlet's own scale. Follow the link for the full review.
“While the great, disturbing concept of Agony surely is worth a shot, every other aspect isn’t. The graphic is old and outdated, the gameplay feels terrible, the level design is simply bad and the story really isn’t all that great.”
“Sadistic hell awaits you. Do not enter, if you are austere moralist and be patient. This game is defective, but unique.”
“Frankly, it’s saving graces are undoubtedly the graphics and its overall atmosphere. Other than that, I wouldn’t say that the game is something you’d get pumped over with the adrenaline of violence and the satisfaction of victory. It’s more of the “I need to get out of here, I need to get out of here!” kind of feeling. And for those of you who are extremely spiritual and religious, then this will probably give you nightmares. This game is definitely not meant for those who have an eidetic memory or who have sleeping problems.”
“Agony is the best video game representation of Hell ever created, but it's the only thing the game has got going for itself. With its lack of gameplay direction, poorly explained mechanics and bad pacing, playing Agony can be a hellish experience, and not for the reasons the development team intended.”
“Unfortunately, I can't recommend this game as the payout of eye candy isn't worth the time you have to put in slogging through hell behind the eyes of a depressingly slow husk of a dead man.”
“Appropriately named for all of the worst reasons...”
“Stay the Hell away.”
“Agony's vision of Hell is breathtaking but its tedious gameplay and plethora of bugs hold it back.”
“Undercooked in all the key places, Agony is just a 10 hour trip through increasingly edgy content that isn't actually fun to play.”
“Unfortunately, Agony stumbles off the starting block and, despite a valiant later effort, is never able to make up lost ground. In this case, a poor first impression irreparably mars the experience, despite measurable improvement in many of the fundamental design principles as the game wears on. The art and audio is striking, but the project may have benefited immensely from less ambition, and the hope is that, should Madmind have a second chance, it will create a more focused and cohesive title. Agony is not great, but it is far from the irredeemable abomination the media has painted it as.”
“Agony is a sea of bugs and a complete disappointment in almost everything - from plot and levels structure to characters and controls.”
“Agony is a mess, both in the gameplay and the presentation. Boring game with a high level of meaningless cruelty.”
“Madmind Studios has successfully created the definitive version of videogame Hell: humdrum, uninspiring gameplay, frustrating level design, stuttering frame-rates, soft locks and crashes galore, unpolished textures, ugly character modelling, sudden inexplicable deaths, and irritating glitches. It is a painful experience from beginning to end, with the only real highlight being the uninstall. An absolute stinker; Agony is most definitely Hell!”
“Agony is a ridiculous and incomplete effort to visualize a new inferno. it almost seems like that developers have been so laser focused on making disgusting environments that they completely forgot about gameplay and even playability.”
“Agony is not a good game. It feels as if the developers just gave up after such a long development cycle. Filled with bugs, boring and infuriating stealth and chase sequences and repetitive puzzles it's very hard to find anything to enjoy in Agony.”
“Although Agony offers a vivid, grotesque, and very disturbing glimpse into the bowels of Hell, it doesn't offer much in the way of polished, coherent gameplay.”
“Agony is good, on paper”
“Even amongst other slower paced first person horror walking simulators, this one stands out as especially poor.”
“Repetitive and boring Gameplay and Weak artistic and technical design are some of the main reasons to stay away from Agony”
“Overall the game feels like a lot of ambition but sadly lacks in follow-through.”
Reviews are the work of the outlets named. Titles, scores and quoted excerpts are reproduced for identification and criticism; each links to the original.
SCORES
RELEASES 1 system
PHYSICAL RELEASES 1 box
