It will be a long time before any game can challenge Agony in the horror department. Promised to be a truly disturbing journey through hell, Agony has launched able to deliver on that. The game’s premise elicited some concern it would ever be produced and allowed to market. Unlike other games, Agony sought to offer an accurate journey through one man’s attempt to escape hell. Many worried the game would be heavily censored when Madmind first announced the scope of gore and sexual content within Agony. However, Madmind released a statement the day of launch confirming that the game was almost completely intact.

This is a huge triumph for a game that features naked, female demons with what appear to be angry vaginas for heads. It also gives some insight into how truly graphic those few seconds must have been. Initial gameplay trailers for the game featured disemboweled bodies as well as babies quite literally having rocks dropped on their heads. It’s fair to point out the babies looked like old men, so that takes away some of the horror. Nonetheless, the game has delivered hard in the disturbing department.

Despite the game being almost entirely uncensored, Madmind was unable to deliver on an Adult Only patch as originally intended. It is more than likely that PEGI ratings as well as Valve’s recent strictness on sexual content helped determine this news. Madmind was quick to say that their game would still include all of the following:

• Gore
• Brutal Sex Scenes
• Lesbian and Gay Sex Scenes
• Genital Physics
• Eye Gouging
• Heart Plucking
• Children Heads Exploding
• Setting Fire to Martyrs and Demons
• Intense Language
• Strong Language
• Drugs

With the features that are going to be in the game, Agony is a horror game unlike anything before it. While Silent Hill toyed with sexuality and gore, Agony thrusts the player violently into it. The world is made of visceral, meaty walls. Bodies lie dismembered, crucified, beheaded, and rearranged all across the world. The game has feeling reminiscent to the 90s Hellraiser series. It isn’t quite gore for the sake of gore like Saw movies; it is gore for the sake of horror. The hellish demons are designed to make players uncomfortable, and the alien world exists to embrace all things disturbing and horrific, but also bizarrely erotic (if you are into that sort of thing).

There are plenty of naked demons to go around, and Madmind hasn’t indicated just who the parties are in the sex scenes in the game. In fact, it’s hard to tell just what to expect from Agony other than viscera. A 16-minute gameplay trailer managed to show much in terms of gore and grotesque but little in terms of what to expect from the rest of the game.

What we do know is that players can expect all of things Madmind indicated in their disturbing list of included content. Agony will also feature traditional staples of the horror genre such as hiding, sneaking, and distracting enemies in order to escape. Agony does have a unique possession element, however, that allows players to leave their body and assume another nearby one after they are caught and killed. They can also use this to later possess more powerful entities, maybe inflicting some horror on some of the creatures that have tormented them.

For a game that got its start as a Kickstarter project, Agony looks to have delivered on the promises it made. Originally conceived as a simple horror game set in hell, the appeal of the game was in the details. Unlike Doom, players wouldn’t be punching, ripping, and shooting their way out of hell. Agony wants hell to seem as horrible as it is supposed to be, which it certainly seems to have achieved.

Agony is out now on Steam, PS4, and Xbox.

UPDATE: Madmind has stated they are aware of some technical issues and are working to hotfix issues many players are having.