This game being published by Psygnosis is rather aproporiate.
Agony is a fantasy themed Horizontal Scrolling Shoot 'Em Up developed by Belgian group Art & Magicnote and published by Psygnosis, released exclusively for the Amiga in 1992.
After years of research, the grand master wizard Acanthropsis finally gets to uncover Cosmic Power, having achieved that so late in age he's in his final days. Not willing to let the newfound knowledge die with him, Acanthropsis conducts a test between two of his apprentices: Alestes and Mentor. Alestes passed, but in a fit of rage Mentor stole the prize and fled, summoning a bunch of creatures along the way, leaving Alestes to shapeshift into a Barn Owl and blast through six gorgeously rendered envoriments, "armed" only with weaponized echolocation and later floating swords as well as a selection of spells (ranging from extra firepower in either directions, Rotating Fireballs, Smart Bombs, Time Freezes and even Invulnerability) obtained through single use scrolls that he's able to hold onto and cast whenever necessary.
Not to be confused with the 2018 horror game set in hell also titled Agony.
Alestes metamorphoses into an owl. The time to trope has come...
- All There in the Manual: Without it, all you're told as soon as the fire button is pressed at the title screen is that the protagonist shapeshifts into an owl. The game was going to have a more proper introduction cinematic but it ended up being scrapped.
- Attack Drone: Up to two flying swords that deal damage on contact serve as this provided they're collected as power ups, with the first one flying above Alestes and other below him.
- Big Bad: Mentor. Having populated the lands with various malicious creatures just to attempt to hinder Alestes, it's safe to say he doesn't have the best interests when it comes to what he could do with the Cosmic Power.
- Book Ends: In a way, the title screen image - the one with the burning tree - gets reused as a loading screen for the final level. The final level itself also reuses the music from the first level.
- Bubblegloop Swamp: The third level has Alestes fly through this sort of area.
- Climactic Volcano Backdrop: The final level has a volcanic backdrop, and also includes a handful of burning trees.
- Continuing is Painful: Losing a life downgrades the shot level by one as well as takes away one of the swords. Because of the way the powerup drops work, it also makes it harder to gather more scrolls until Alestes gets his max shot level back.
- Cute Owl: For a Shoot 'Em Up protagonist, Alestes is gorgeously animated.
- Every 10,000 Points: Extra lives are gained on every 8000 points.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Mentor sics quite a variety of creatures to impede Alestes's quest, including Fish, Insects, Ghosts, Skulls, Demons and even weirder creatures.
- Hitbox Dissonance: While the Owl's hitbox is quite big for a shoot em up, at least it apparently doesn't cover the constantly flapping wings.
- Horse of a Different Color: The second level's boss is a guy riding an insect, repeatedly chucking arcing Boomerangs at Alestes.
- Invincibility Power-Up: Available as one of the spells, albeit rare. And its icon is the spherical Psygnosis owl!
- Living Statue: The fourth level has this as a boss, attacking Alestes with an Epic Flail with quite a horizontal reach.
- The Lost Woods: Alestes has to fly through the forest in the second level.
- Me's a Crowd: The Black Magic Seeker spell summons an invincible clone of Alestes that blasts enemies on its own accord as long as the spell lasts. The fifth boss also attacks Alestes with duplicates of itself in addition to standard bullets.
- Menu Time Lockout: The spells menu freezes the action whenever it's on.
- Mercy Invincibility: If you thought Alestes's animated sprite was gorgeous, check out the animation where his invincibility is active.
- Motion Parallax: The environments have three-layered parallax.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: The game does not buck that Shoot 'Em Up tradition.
- Orbiting Particle Shield: Available as one of the spells, named Rotating Fireball.
- Our Monsters Are Weird: Some enemies teeter on this, with particular standout being the very first boss, a water monster that looks a bit like an agape penguin being made all out of waves.
- The Owl-Knowing One: Well, Alestes is a spellcaster that shapeshifted into an owl for his quest. Nonetheless, he's still a spellcasting owl.
- Post-Defeat Explosion Chain: The bosses get reduced into series of explosions upon their defeat.
- Real Is Brown: As the enemies were using blitter maps also used with the frontmost background layer rather than hardware sprites (used by the owl and the projectiles as well as rain effects), some of them share the colors with the background, making them look not only muted compared to our Owly protagonist, but also have the tendency to blend in with the background at times.
- Scenery Porn: With lushly depicted environments displayed with three layers of parallax scrolling, the game managed to outdo Shadow of the Beast in that regard as far as the Amiga library is concerned.
- Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: As a result of an limitation. Alestes fires a single wave on screen, but not only is the projectile itself quite fast, this game is a case of a Shoot 'Em Up with auto-fire being on by default, so the damage per second output increases on a shorter range, which is especially key when dealing with some of the more spongier enemies.
- Smart Bomb: Available as one of the spells.
- Time Stands Still: Available as one of the spells. Bosses can be especially cheesed this way.
- Unstable Equilibrium: The game seems to only drop scrolls for spells when Alestes is at max shot level and has two swords, so completing the spellbook hinges on the player not getting hit once. Completing and conserving the entire spellbook has the game instead drop orbs worth of points, which is vital for getting those extra lives.
- A Winner Is You: Defeating Mentor grants you with a text that states that Acanthropsis grants Alestes a scroll of cosmic strength and creation, and is tasked with hiding this secret in order to preserve the everlasting peace.
