Agony

Agony is a dark fantasy survival horror game set in the depths of hell. Players take on the role of a tormented soul, stripped of memories, who must navigate the extreme and horrifying conditions of the underworld. The protagonist possesses the unique ability to control other lost souls and possess weak-minded demons, using their special abilities to solve puzzles, avoid detection, and survive long enough to seek an audience with the Red Goddess, one of hell’s creators, in a desperate attempt to escape back to the land of the living.

Agony: A Descent into Development Hell and Artistic Ambition

In the annals of video game history, few titles are as aptly named as Agony. Released in 2018 by Polish developer Madmind Studio, it promised an unprecedented, visceral journey through the depths of Hell itself. It was a game born from grand ambition, a Kickstarter success story that captured the imagination of horror fans with its grotesque art and terrifying premise. Yet, upon its release, it became a cautionary tale—a masterpiece of atmosphere shackled to profoundly flawed gameplay. This is the story of a game that aimed for the infernal heights of artistic horror but found itself mired in the very damnation it sought to portray.

Development History & Context

Madmind Studio was founded in 2016 by Tomasz Dutkiewicz, a veteran artist who had worked on major titles like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2. His vision for Agony was starkly different from the action-oriented horror games saturating the market. In a 2017 interview, Dutkiewicz lamented that horror games had “lost their uniqueness,” becoming “clones of others, bringing nothing new to the genre.” He sought a return to the genre’s roots, aiming to craft a experience that prioritized dread, atmosphere, and a truly unsettling setting: Hell itself.

The project was fueled by a successful Kickstarter campaign in late 2016, surpassing its funding goal and generating significant hype. The pitch was compelling: a first-person survival horror game inspired by Dante’s Inferno and the works of dark fantasy artists like H.R. Giger and Hieronymus Bosch. The team chose Unreal Engine 4 for its powerful graphical capabilities, essential for realizing their nightmarish vision.

However, the road to release was fraught with challenges. The initial release date of March 30, 2018, was pushed back to May 29th. More significantly, the game initially received an “Adults Only” (AO) rating from the ESRB due to its extreme violence and sexual content. This posed an existential threat, as major platforms like PlayStation and Xbox do not carry AO-rated games. Forced to choose between artistic integrity and commercial viability, Madmind made the difficult decision to censor the game to achieve a “Mature” (M) rating. This decision fractured the community, though the developers later managed to release Agony Unrated on PC in October 2018 as a separate, uncensored product with additional improvements.

The Gaming Landscape of 2018

Agony entered a market dominated by polished, action-heavy horror titles like Resident Evil 7 and the critically acclaimed Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. It positioned itself as a diametric opposite to id Software’s DOOM (2016)—where that game was a power fantasy of demon slaughter, Agony was a vulnerable, stealth-based struggle for survival. This was its unique selling point, but it also set an incredibly high bar for its atmosphere and gameplay to carry the experience.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

You awaken as a nameless, amnesiac soul in the deepest pits of Hell. Your only memory is a haunting image of the Red Goddess, a mysterious entity rumored to hold the key to escape. This is the Faustian core of Agony‘s narrative: a bargain for freedom from a realm of perpetual suffering.

The protagonist is eventually revealed to be a historical figure, referred to by the Red Goddess as Nimrod and by other tormented souls as Amraphel. He was once a powerful king who made a pact with this dark deity, damning not only himself but his entire kingdom to eternal torment. The story unfolds through environmental storytelling, scattered journal entries, and encounters with the damned, who often blame you for their fate.

The narrative is deeply entangled with psychosexual horror and a crossover cosmology, blending Sumerian, Babylonian, and biblical mythology. The Red Goddess is revealed to be the Whore of Babylon, a classic figure of apocalyptic prophecy. Her goal is not to help you, but to use you to free the Beast of Hell—Satan himself—and unleash the Apocalypse upon Earth.

The game features seven different endings, though only two are considered canonical. The standard ending is a profound Downer Ending: you obey the Goddess, possess the Beast, break its seals, and are returned to Earth as promised—only to be immediately crushed underfoot by the very Beast you freed as it begins its conquest. Your soul is then cast back into Hell, your journey utterly futile. Other endings range from becoming a demon yourself to a “golden” ending where you reclaim your power and become the new ruler of Hell. The narrative is ambitious, exploring themes of guilt, punishment, free will, and the corrupting nature of power, but it is often lost in a haze of poor pacing and confusing delivery.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

Agony is, at its core, a first-person survival horror game emphasizing stealth and puzzle-solving over combat. You are weak, vulnerable, and utterly outmatched by the horrors that stalk the caverns of flesh and bone.

The Core Loop: The gameplay revolves around navigating labyrinthine environments, avoiding demons, and solving environmental puzzles. These often involve finding specific items (a heart, a fetus) and using them on altars or in grotesque rituals to open paths forward. This loop becomes intensely repetitive, with critics noting that the 8-10 hour runtime could have been halved without losing substance.

Possession Mechanic: Your primary supernatural ability is to possess other lost souls and, later, weaker demons. This is used both as a means of survival—when your current body is killed, your spirit must quickly find a new host—and as a puzzle-solving tool. Demons can break through certain barriers. However, this critical system is poorly explained. On higher difficulty settings, the game doesn’t tell you that you must remove bags from certain hosts before possessing them, leading to frequent, frustrating deaths.

Stealth & Survival: Hiding involves crouching behind obstacles and holding your breath to avoid detection. The enemy AI is inconsistent, sometimes hyper-alert and other times oblivious, making stealth feel unreliable. The movement speed is notoriously slow, amplifying the frustration when you die and have to retrace your steps from a distant checkpoint.

The Checkpoint System: This was a universal point of criticism. Save points are found in large mirrors, activated by interacting with a screaming skull. Their placement is erratic—sometimes two appear minutes apart, other times players can go 20 minutes without one. Dying often means replaying large, slow-paced sections, which quickly desensitizes the player to the horror and replaces it with annoyance.

Agony Mode: Beyond the story, the game features an “Agony Mode” with randomly generated levels for score attack, but this was largely ignored by critics and players due to the core game’s flaws.

In essence, Agony‘s gameplay is a series of good ideas hamstrung by poor execution, a lack of player guidance, and repetitive design that undermines its own atmospheric strengths.

World-Building, Art & Sound

If there is one unassailable triumph in Agony, it is its artistic vision. This is one of the most fully realized and terrifying depictions of Hell ever created in a video game.

Visual Design: The art direction is a breathtaking achievement in grotesquerie. This is the Bloody Bowels of Hell made manifest. Environments are a pulsating, gothic nightmare of organic horror: walls of fused flesh and sinew, rivers of blood and fire, corridors lined with dangling fetuses, and architecture that seems to breathe and bleed. The influence of Dante, Bosch, and Giger is palpable and masterfully synthesized into a cohesive, horrifying whole. The level of detail is staggering, with every inch of the environment demanding a second, horrified look.

Character and Creature Design: The demons and denizens of Hell are a mix of the terrifying and the Fan Disservice. While male demons are classic, DOOM-like brutes, the female demons are overtly sexualized succubi—nude, buxom, and often engaged in graphic acts. This choice was controversial, leaning heavily into Psychosexual Horror. While effective for some, for others it crossed into gratuitous territory. The human NPCs, however, were notably less detailed, with last-gen character models that clashed with the otherwise high-fidelity environments.

Sound Design: The audio landscape is largely superb. The ambient sounds are a symphony of torment: distant screams, the drip of blood, the squelch of walking on flesh, and the guttural roars of unseen beasts create an unbearably oppressive atmosphere. The sound design does immense work in building dread.

Voice Acting and Score: This is where the audio stumbles. The voice acting is frequently panned as awful, with poor line delivery, bad microphone quality, and terrible lip-syncing shattering immersion. The score by Draco Nared is suitably hellish and ambient but is often lost behind the other sound elements.

Despite the gameplay flaws, Agony functions as a potent, interactive work of dark art. It is a game to be witnessed, even if it is often a trial to play.

Reception & Legacy

Agony was met with “generally unfavorable reviews” upon release. It holds a Metacritic score of 47/100 on PC, 37/100 on PS4, and 34/100 on Xbox One.

Critical Response: Critics were united in praising the game’s ambition and visual artistry but savaged its gameplay. IGN’s David Jagneaux called it a “captivating disappointment,” stating that “the painful gameplay takes the gruesome joy out of its disturbing imagery.” GameSpot’s Justin Clark acknowledged its “breathtaking achievement” in world-building but lamented that the player “grows numb” to it due to repetitive tasks and frustrating mechanics. The Escapist’s Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw famously dubbed it “liquidized offal” and ranked it the second-worst game of 2018.

Player Response: The player base was similarly divided. Those who valued atmosphere above all else found things to appreciate, but most were frustrated by the technical issues and clunky design. The Steam review rating settled at “Mixed.”

Legacy and the “World of Agony”: Despite its rocky start, Agony did not fade into oblivion. Its compelling dark fantasy universe spawned a franchise Madmind Studio calls “The World of Agony.”

• Succubus (2021): This action-heavy spin-off where you play as the demon Vydija was received notably better by players, seen as an improvement in gameplay and a confident doubling-down on the transgressive style.
• Agony: Lords of Hell (TBA): An announced strategy/city-building game set between Agony and Succubus.
• Agony VR (2023): The game was also ported to virtual reality, an experience that is arguably the most intense way to witness its terrifying landscapes.

Agony‘s legacy is that of a flawed pioneer. It proved there was an audience for deeply transgressive, art-house horror games, paving the way for titles that could learn from its mistakes. It remains a fascinating case study in how a powerful aesthetic vision can be undermined by inadequate gameplay design, a testament to the fact that in game development, ambition must be matched by execution.

Conclusion

Agony is a game of profound contrasts. It is a breathtaking artistic achievement shackled to a tedious and frustrating gameplay experience. It is a world of unparalleled horror that becomes mundane through overexposure and repetition. It is a story with fascinating mythological depth that is told through a disjointed and confusing narrative.

As a piece of interactive art, it is a memorable, often shocking descent into a uniquely realized vision of damnation. As a video game, it is a flawed, often agonizing slog that fails to support its own ambition.

Its final verdict is a split one. For students of game art and horror aficionados fascinated by the depiction of the infernal, Agony and its Unrated version are essential, if flawed, pilgrimages. For the average player seeking a balanced and enjoyable horror experience, it is a cautionary tale best approached with lowered expectations and a high tolerance for frustration. In the end, Agony secured its place in history not as a masterpiece of gameplay, but as a masterclass in atmosphere—a glorious, beautiful, and deeply flawed monument to the hell that game development can sometimes be.