I'm really looking forward to the first-person survival-horror game Agony, even thought I'm still not entirely clear what it's all about. The new gameplay trailer released today doesn't to much to clarify things: The player, who is in control of a powerful demon, strides across the icky surface of Hell in search of the Red Goddess, who possesses the only means of escape.
Sounds simple enough—people stuck in Hell are usually pretty anxious to leave—but what I find baffling is all the hideous torture the demon (that is, the player) inflicts on the suffering souls as he passes. Maybe there's a reason for driving a claw into that guy's brain by way of his eyeball, but I struggle to see any practical benefit coming from it. Demon gotta demon, I guess.
I really hope Agony works out well, because it seems so forthrightly dark and bizarre, but I wish I had a better sense of what the overall point is. The Steam listing isn't much help—you wake up in Hell with no memories and have to find the exit—and neither is the "Official Demons" trailer below, which is not kidding when it warns of "violent footage and flashing images which some may find disturbing." On the whole, it's probably NSFW (there's a spot of jiggle physics on display, too), so watch at your own risk.
Agony is set to come out in the second quarter of this year, which puts it somewhere between April 1 and June 30. Find out more at agonygame.com.