Agony casts the player as a tormented soul in Hell, unable to remember the past and searching for a way out. The route forward leads toward the mystical Red Goddess, described as the only entity who knows how escape is possible. That premise gives the journey a grim purpose, while the setting’s hostile souls and nightmare creatures make survival part of the story’s central problem.
Rather than following a strictly linear, corridor-style path, Agony is designed around a semi-open world with multiple routes, endings, opportunities to explore, and secrets to uncover. Its defining survival tool is possession: the protagonist can control people encountered along the way and take over simple-minded demons. These abilities link exploration to danger, asking players to navigate the hellscape and use other beings as a means of staying alive.
The game pairs its story mode with Agony Mode, an open challenge system that randomly generates levels to explore and survive for high scores.
