Agony, survival horror set in hell, gets two new trailers

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Listen up: Madmind Studio, a Polish studio created in 2016, released two new trailers for Agony, its first game. It is a first-person psychological survival horror that throws you straight into hell, with no warning and no map.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL3ZS6TFyK0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds1Ute5Ygac

The premise is heavy: you are a tormented soul who wakes up in the depths of hell with no memory of who you were, and must find a way out. The trailers make clear the mood the studio wanted: grotesque settings, darkness and creatures that give no respite.

The project had gone through Kickstarter shortly before: the campaign opened in November 2016, hit its goal and ended in December. Publishing went to PlayWay and direction to Tomasz Dutkiewicz. At the time of the trailers, the promise was to release on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

What came next

The launch was at one point set for March 30, 2018, but was delayed to May 29, 2018 on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. To avoid the ESRB’s AO rating, which bars games from console stores, the studio cut content from the console versions. An uncensored patch was promised and ended up canceled for legal reasons. The answer came as Agony Unrated, a separate version released on Steam on October 31, 2018, with updated graphics and models, new mechanics and enemies and extra endings.

Critics did not go easy: an average of 47 on PC, 37 on PS4 and 34 on Xbox One on Metacritic. The look of hell was praised, but the repetitive gameplay and punishing stealth took a beating. There was also a Nintendo Switch version on October 31, 2019, from Forever Entertainment, and the spin-off Succubus, announced in December 2018 and released in October 2021, which fared better with players. It is a mess: plenty of ambition, execution that split everyone.