Was it all just a dream?
While Agony excels in fantastic graphics with its vibrant parallax-scrolling backgrounds and truly artistic loading screens with touching music the major caveat is the actual gameplay. You control an owl (strikingly similar to the Psygnosis logo-birdy...) which flies through a side scrolling landscape. Pressing the fire button sends out arcs of death that will bring down opponents after a varying number of hits. Enemies mainly appear in traditional formations approaching from front and behind. Some of them drop powerups that increase the size of your shots until they cover half the height of the screen. You can also obtain a pair of satellite swords protecting your flanks. And that's all there is to it - you simply dodge opponents while keeping the fire button depressed until you reach the end of the level.
Agony is a hard game because if you lose a life the next owl will start with less powerups making the game that much more challenging, and you will usually lose the entire round shortly after. I never managed to complete the game, my owl always stooping to the ground on the fifth of the game's six levels. The game remains a showcase for the capabilities of the Commodore Amiga but not much more.