''Agony'' is a horizontally

scrolling shooter Shoot 'em ups (also known as shmups or STGs) are a subgenre of action games. There is no consensus as to which design elements compose a shoot 'em up; some restrict the definition to games featuring spacecraft and certain types of character m ...

with a surreal fantasy background. It was released by

Psygnosis Psygnosis Limited (; known as SCE Studio Liverpool or simply Studio Liverpool from 1999) was a British video game developer and Video game publisher, publisher headquartered at Wavertree Technology Park in Liverpool. Founded in 1984 by Ian Het ...

in 1992 for the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...

. 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 game An arcade video game is an arcade game that takes player input from its controls, processes it through electrical or computerized components, and displays output to an electronic monitor or similar display. All arcade video games are coin-oper ...

s 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.

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 Dimmu Borgir () is a Norwegian symphonic black metal band from Jessheim, formed in 1993. The name is derived from Dimmuborgir, a volcanic formation in Iceland, the name of which means "dark cities" or "dark castles/fortresses" in Icelandic lang ...

in the song "Sorgens Kammer" for their ''

Stormblåst ''Stormblåst'' (English: ''Stormblown'') is the second studio album by Norwegian symphonic black metal band Dimmu Borgir. It was released on 25 January 1996 through Cacophonous Records, re-released in 2001 by Century Media, and completely re-re ...

'' album.''Agony'' notes at Psygnosis
/ref> 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''.Re-recording information at Punk TV
/ref> 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

Legacy

Around 2010, graphic artist Franck Sauer started to offer the game's

binary file A binary file is a computer file that is not a text file. The term "binary file" is often used as a term meaning "non-text file". Many binary file formats contain parts that can be interpreted as text; for example, some computer document files ...

s ( ADF format) for free download on his personal webpage, making the game

freeware Freeware is software, often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the free ...

. On July 4, 2020, the programmer of the game, Yves Grolet, uploaded all his Amiga development files (which included full

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

for ''Agony'') to

WeTransfer WeTransfer B.V. is a Dutch Internet-based computer file transfer service company that was founded in 2009 and based in Amsterdam. In 2024, the company was acquired by Bending Spoons. History Early history WeTransfer was founded in 2009 by Rinke ...

References

External links

''Agony''
page from the game's artist Franck Sauer *
''Agony''
at Psygnosis.org {{DEFAULTSORT:Agony (Video Game) 1992 video games Amiga games Amiga-only games Freeware games Commercial video games with freely available source code Psygnosis games Horizontally scrolling shooters Video games about birds Video games scored by Jeroen Tel Video games scored by Matthew Simmonds Video games scored by Tim Wright (Welsh musician) Video games developed in Belgium Fantasy video games Single-player video games