Agony
Description official description
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.
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Screenshots
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Credits (Amiga version)
18 People
| Artwork | |
| Programming | |
| Game Music | |
| Produced By | |
| Title Music | |
| End Music | |
| Loading Music | |
| Flashback Compressor | |
| Disk Loader | |
| Quality Assurance | |
| Cover Art and Logo Design |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 76% (based on 18 ratings)
Players
Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 24 ratings with 2 reviews)
Sideways scrolling shooter with top quality visuals
The Good
The presentation of this game like most Psygnosis titles is top drawer, with fantastic graphics and music on the title screens and throughout the game. It is very easy to pick and play if you can't be bothered with anything more taxing on the brain.
The Bad
The enemies come in very predictable patterns and the difficulty curve is very slow. The load times are also slow, but this is probably the price paid for the graphics. There are only six levels which shouldn't take the most moderately skilled gamer long to complete.
The Bottom Line
This is a typical sideways scrolling shooter, with some differences in that you control an owl instead of the usual space ship. You have to destroy wave after wave of enemies such as mutated insects and bats. It is very easy to stay alive as the patterns of baddies are very predictable and rarely take you by surprise.
If you pick up all the power ups in the first level you should have no trouble progressing right to the end of the game, as the difficulty curve in later levels in is very gentle.
The graphics and sound are what jump out at you in this game, as the gameplay is very basic. Worth a look if you like this sort of game, if only for the visuals.
Amiga · by Neepie Lantern (524) · 2004
The Good
I was impressed by the flickering hi-res intro image and the tune. They sounded amazing at that time, and they still do. The game was gorgeous, the sound breath-taking - the gameplay superb.
The Bad
The game was a bit difficult after a while, but I guess it was worth it.
The Bottom Line
One of the most important amiga games, by one of the most important development houses. Amazing, gorgeous.
Amiga · by Mark Papadakis (35) · 2004
Trivia
Allister Brimble
Allister Brimble is listed in the credits as one of the five loading music composers but although he did compose one tune for this game, it was not used.
Dimmu Borgir
When Norwegian black metal band Dimmu Borgir released their 1996 album Stormblåst, one of the songs, Sorgens Kammer was a cover of Agony's title track. They never gave any credit to its creator though, and therefore the track was later replaced when the composer contacted the band.
Intro
The non-playable demo of the game contains following information: "After starting up with an over 50 takes long animated intro sequence Agony will lead you through 6 worlds." The problem is that there is no intro sequence in the final release of the game. Franck Sauer (from the development team) was kind enough and provided precise information about the missing intro for Agony:
There was an animated intro sequence that was supposed to be included into the game and explained its backstory in more detail. That sequence had been animated by fellow artist Marc Albinet but didn't make it into the game mainly because it would have required one or two more disks and given the quality wasn't really on par with the in-game art, Psygnosis and Yves Grolet (lead programmer) decided it was not worth it."
Music
Tim Wright composed two tunes for this game but "title" tune was not used in its original version and "high score" tune was not used at all.
When he sent the tune off for inclusion in the game, Franck Sauer (from the development team) changed the piano samples in it for better ones. However, one of them was at the wrong octave. Wright did not find out about these changes until the game hit the shelves and as he states: "Maybe people like it but it always sounded wrong to me". He eventually released both unused "high score" tune and the original version of "title" tune on December 10, 2001. They can be downloaded from his personal website (in one 7 MB big archive with all other tunes he created on Amiga) or from Exotica.
Owl
The owl controlled by the player, is actually the one from Psygnosis' logo.
Information also provided by B.L. Stryker and M4R14N0
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Agony
Franck Sauer's retrospective on the game's development.
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Johnny "ThunderPeel2001" Walker.
Additional contributors: Kabushi, Martin Smith, Havoc Crow, Patrick Bregger.
Game added February 1, 2004. Last modified July 8, 2024.