- Joined
- Apr 29, 2014
Explaining Anonymous Agony is really, really hard. But I'll try nevertheless.
Around 2012, when Kickstarter was new, /v/ would regularly make threads to mock some of the worst-looking game campaigns on the site. One of those found by Anon was the campaign of Anonymous Agony, the RPG Maker brainchild of one Jake Caro. Anonymous Agony tells the tale of Haze, a guy with a love of edgy humor, being an asshole to everybody and murdering pedophiles. You see, his younger sister, Clara, was raped by a predator she met online and invited into her house and both go a bit... crazy as a result. Haze starts tracking down pedophiles in his bloodlusty revenge and Clara becomes catatonic and is locked up in a mental hospital.
Concept art of Haze from the loading screen. Loading screens in an RPG Maker game. Fake loading screens.
The first episode, File #0, was included with the Kickstarter as a demo of sorts detailing Haze and Clara's relationship before the rape. It was only a ten to fifteen minutes long demo made in an old version of RPG Maker and involved a lot of bizarre writing, amateurish voice-acting and a complete lack of actual gameplay, but there was a surprising amount of love put into it by Jake that gave it a certain charm. /v/ immediately fell in love with it (ironically or unironically, nobody can tell), streams were held, memes were created, a cult was born and the Kickstarter was financed successfully.
"Ouch dad, isn't it society's fault I'm the way I am?" - Haze
Despite the successful backing, things did not work out behind the scenes. Details are sparse, but development was moving at a snail's pace as it seems Jake bit off more than he could chew. The apparent plan was for Anonymous Agony to have twelve episodes, or "files", released over the years alternating between the POV of Haze and Clara, but as Jake was mostly working on his own he got a bit too ambitious with not enough money to hire more people. One of the dissatisfied developers helping him out eventually leaked a build of File #1 on /v/ that was close to being finished.
The actual gameplay of Anonymous Agony involves Haze walking around town aimlessly, helping strangers like cops, hookers, assassins, artists, little children and so on in a weird attempt to s mix a traditional VN with Persona's social ranks. Haze ends up making friends with a lot of very memorable and quotable characters, both offline and online, as the plot details his slow descent into pedo-killing madness and getting involved with a massive international conspiracy about tens of thousands of kidnapped people and the phrase "STRATUM" that was somehow censored off the entire Internet. The build was also rather buggy, breaking at certain times, accidentally sending you to the wrong day at others and having at least one sidequest unable to be finished 90% of the time for reasons that were never quite clear. As you can imagine, /v/ was ecstatic, but tears were wept over the uncertain future of the game.
Now fast-forward to the year 2019, Jake held another Kickstarter campaign last year for Anonymous Agony #RELOADED# that was backed successfully at the last literal minute and finally, after all this time, Anonymous Agony File #1 is here on Steam in all its YE YE-ing glory. Four bucks might seem steep for a weird little RPG Maker cult thing, but this game has brought me and other Anons a lot of joy over the years, and it's my hope that I can now share Anonymous Agony with you guys and make you fall in love with it the way I did all those years ago.
Smoothie time.
Around 2012, when Kickstarter was new, /v/ would regularly make threads to mock some of the worst-looking game campaigns on the site. One of those found by Anon was the campaign of Anonymous Agony, the RPG Maker brainchild of one Jake Caro. Anonymous Agony tells the tale of Haze, a guy with a love of edgy humor, being an asshole to everybody and murdering pedophiles. You see, his younger sister, Clara, was raped by a predator she met online and invited into her house and both go a bit... crazy as a result. Haze starts tracking down pedophiles in his bloodlusty revenge and Clara becomes catatonic and is locked up in a mental hospital.
Concept art of Haze from the loading screen. Loading screens in an RPG Maker game. Fake loading screens.
The first episode, File #0, was included with the Kickstarter as a demo of sorts detailing Haze and Clara's relationship before the rape. It was only a ten to fifteen minutes long demo made in an old version of RPG Maker and involved a lot of bizarre writing, amateurish voice-acting and a complete lack of actual gameplay, but there was a surprising amount of love put into it by Jake that gave it a certain charm. /v/ immediately fell in love with it (ironically or unironically, nobody can tell), streams were held, memes were created, a cult was born and the Kickstarter was financed successfully.
Despite the successful backing, things did not work out behind the scenes. Details are sparse, but development was moving at a snail's pace as it seems Jake bit off more than he could chew. The apparent plan was for Anonymous Agony to have twelve episodes, or "files", released over the years alternating between the POV of Haze and Clara, but as Jake was mostly working on his own he got a bit too ambitious with not enough money to hire more people. One of the dissatisfied developers helping him out eventually leaked a build of File #1 on /v/ that was close to being finished.
The actual gameplay of Anonymous Agony involves Haze walking around town aimlessly, helping strangers like cops, hookers, assassins, artists, little children and so on in a weird attempt to s mix a traditional VN with Persona's social ranks. Haze ends up making friends with a lot of very memorable and quotable characters, both offline and online, as the plot details his slow descent into pedo-killing madness and getting involved with a massive international conspiracy about tens of thousands of kidnapped people and the phrase "STRATUM" that was somehow censored off the entire Internet. The build was also rather buggy, breaking at certain times, accidentally sending you to the wrong day at others and having at least one sidequest unable to be finished 90% of the time for reasons that were never quite clear. As you can imagine, /v/ was ecstatic, but tears were wept over the uncertain future of the game.
Now fast-forward to the year 2019, Jake held another Kickstarter campaign last year for Anonymous Agony #RELOADED# that was backed successfully at the last literal minute and finally, after all this time, Anonymous Agony File #1 is here on Steam in all its YE YE-ing glory. Four bucks might seem steep for a weird little RPG Maker cult thing, but this game has brought me and other Anons a lot of joy over the years, and it's my hope that I can now share Anonymous Agony with you guys and make you fall in love with it the way I did all those years ago.
Smoothie time.
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