Agony, the first-person survival horror game that is set in actual hell, is still meant to be releasing this year. Although Andy reported it'd probably be some time before June, the Steam page nowadays simply lists "2017". So we might need to wait a little longer, but in the meantime there's a brand new gameplay video to watch.

As you'll see, Agony doesn't promise to be a very cheerful game, but the art style is undeniably appealing if you're into horror and/or German darkwave nightclubs. There will be a lot of environmental storytelling and scares, but I'm not sure whether there will be any demon-slaying in it. This is not Doom, after all.

Check out the video below:

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.

I post a lot of teasers, trailers, and gameplay videos, as you might imagine, and it's extremely rare that I feel compelled to warn people that they might not want to watch one of them while at work, or with children present. Agony is definitely one of those games. It's a first-person horror game about escaping from the depths of Hell, and what we've been exposed to thus far really is quite hellish.

It was, and remains, slated for release sometime in the second quarter of next year, which is coming up rather quickly. Even so, developer Madmind Studio has launched a Kickstarter to support an expansion of the game beyond its initial design. "We do not want to disappoint the great expectations of what is to our production in recent weeks emerged. That is why we ask you for support. We are determined to make this game even bigger and better than originally planned," the studio said. (Madmind is based in Poland, so the english is a bit hinky in spots.)

The Kickstarter doesn't reveal much in the way of new information about the game, but it does offer some interesting insights into how Madmind is approaching its development. Survival-horror has become "rusty" in recent years, the studio said, because it's veering too far into action game territory. "We are still visiting psychiatric hospitals and abandoned houses, shooting zombies and running from cultists. Some productions have become clones of others, bringing nothing new to the genre," it wrote. "There are few exceptions of course, but generally this genre stops its own evolution."

Agony aims to take a more psychological approach, and will make heavy use of audio and non-conventional concepts of Hell "to induce anxiety, fear, and shivers." The images on the Kickstarter and Steam pages make it pretty clear what Madmind is aiming for: The mix of sexualized grotesqueries and unearthly, horrific environments can be powerfully uncomfortable. Make it move and scream and slither on you while you're desperately trying to get away, and yes, I can see where that'd really be something you wouldn't want to miss.

The Agony Kickstarter is live now and runs until December 10, with a goal of $66,666.

Since its announcement in May, one thing that s really impressed me about Madmind s upcoming hell-set horror game Agony is its scope to unsettle. Its trailers are purposefully shocking, depicting all sorts of grotesque abominations, yet it s a shock value that stays with you one I haven t felt so convinced by from a horror game pre-release since the second Silent Hill.

The latest extended trailer, which I wouldn t recommend watching if you have a nervous disposition, returns to its graphic interpretation of hell and is filled with impaled corpses, seemingly catatonic condemned humans, eye gouging, and several shots of that terrifying satanic Red Goddess.

Last week, you might ve spotted Andy talking about Agony s latest eight minute-long gameplay trailer. Again, viewer discretion is advised, and while that footage is without context or story, the world that Madmind has crafted is one I m really looking forward to exploring.

With Agony now due at some point before the end of June next year, I think I ve got just about enough time to muster up the courage to do so. More information can be found on Agony's official site.

Agony is a first-person horror game being developed by Polish studio Madmind. It was announced in May, and will see players take a tour of the depths of hell, as experienced by a tormented soul with no memory of the crimes that led to him landing in the burny basement. But you can look for clues in the debut gameplay trailer which was released today: It's eight unpleasant minutes spent in a chittering, nightmarish underworld, utterly without context or plot. Enjoy!

Or course, the trailer's opaqueness doesn't mean the game won't have a proper story. Rather, it seems intended to be an environmental demo. And on that level it works. Nothing in the video is straight-up scary, but it's grotesque and uncomfortable, like the best bits of Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Any game can throw a monster out of a closet, but it takes real effort to make a person think, Man, I wish I was not playing this right now, while simultaneously ensuring that they don't stop.

I don't know if Agony will be able to pull that conjuring trick off, but I like what I've seen so far. It's listed on Steam now, if you want to poke at it a bit more closely, and there's also a website at agonygame.com with a few more details. The game is slated for launch sometime in 2017.