ZOE Begone! review: Frantic, fast-paced, and joyful

If you’re looking for a game that’s lightning-fast and full of chaos, look no further than the bullet hell genre. Bullet hell games are both frantic and fun, chucking swarms of enemies at the player while they upgrade their weapons and spray out barrages of attacks. 

ZOE Begone is a vibrant, hand-drawn game that blends elements of bullet hells, shoot-em-ups, and classic arcade titles, offering a chaotic and joyful experience. If you’re thinking about picking it up, here’s The Escapist’s full review. 

The Escapist recaps

• ZOE Begone is a bullet hell shooter from Retchy Games and PM Studios, taking inspiration from the 1930s style of direct animation. The art style is colorful and has plenty of personality, with a unique style of boss design.  
• The game is fast-paced and chaotic, with a slew of interesting enemies – ranging from heat-seeking arrows to wiggly lines – and boss fights. The game has a decent level of challenge to it, but offers three different difficulty modes to suit all experience levels.
• There are three game modes to choose from, offering bags of replayability, with a regular arcade mode, timed mode, and boss rush mode. It pays homage to classic titles yet still feels modern.
• ZOE BEGONE was a delight to play through, with an addictive, “just one more try” style of play. It performed well for the most part, although the game did crash once during the tutorial, and there were a few frame drops while playing on the Nintendo Switch 2. 

Plenty of run-and-gun goodness

Blending elements of run-and-gun games with bullet hells, shmups, and old-school arcade titles, ZOE Begone is a title that oozes chaos and fun.

It’s an action-packed romp through rolls of film, placing players in the tiny, triangular shoes of the titular Zoe. Zoe can shoot bullets, fly, and dash or ground-pound to get enemies out of the way, enhanced by the power-ups that can be unlocked by progressing through the game.

All Zoe wants is to take a nap, but the animator – a boss-sized artist wielding huge paintbrushes and pens – won’t let them. As a result, they need to zip through various rolls of film and survive a slew of chaotic boss battles, gathering apples to stay alive and gearing up with gun upgrades or health buffs. 

The rolls of film act as individual stages for each section, looping around to create an endless space to run and attack. The aim is to clear the rolls of enemies, but that’s easier said than done – especially on the hardest difficulty mode. 

There are three game modes to choose from in ZOE: the standard level-based arcade mode, the breakneck-speed time attack mode, and the challenging boss rush mode. Adding an easy, standard, and hard difficulty into the mix added even more replay value. 

We spent the most amount of time in the arcade mode for this review, exploring the various boss fights and unique levels on offer, but the time attack mode was a blast to play through as well, adding a deeper level of challenge to the game. 

Unique art style and theming

ZOE Begone has a colorful, eye-popping aesthetic, with ink-splashed screens, lively enemies, and an upbeat, thematically-appropriate soundtrack. It’s visually striking and stands out from the crowd in the bullet hell niche. 

The variety of enemies and hazards helps to keep things fresh and interesting while zipping through the arcade mode.

Additionally, the comically huge paintbrushes and pens made for entertaining boss fights – they were deadly and presented a real challenge, especially on the hardest difficulty, but there was something hilariously whimsical about squaring off with a fan brush. 

The style of health and energy bars did admittedly take a while to get used to, as they blended into one another and were tucked directly under the vertical map at the bottom of the screen. It was a lot of information to parse in one space. 

This will likely come down to personal preference and may not present as an issue for some players, but some visual customization options would’ve been greatly appreciated. It could’ve been helpful to see an alternate way of viewing key information, like a smaller version of the health bar above Zoe’s head, for example. 

Decent performance with some small quirks

ZOE Begone has a delightful art style and overall aesthetic, and it looked fantastic on the Nintendo Switch 2, feeling at home on the handheld console.

For the most part, it performed well and did not present many notable issues. The biggest issue that occurred was a one-off crash during the tutorial stages right at the beginning of the review sessions, but this was not replicable and did not occur again in the following hours of gameplay.

There were also a few small frame drops when Zoe used the dash ability to zoom through large lines of enemies, nothing huge, but noticeably there. This got mostly better when the screen shake and screen blur effects were removed in the settings, though.

Other than these two concerns, there were no notable issues when playing through ZOE Begone. The art style was charming, the gameplay loop was addictive, and players who enjoy arcade-style bullet hells are sure to fall in love with the game. It’s fast-paced and frantic, with a uniquely charming theme, and it offers plenty of replay value. 

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