Step into the looping reels of madness with ZOE Begone!, a hand-drawn bullet hell that feels like Betty Boop got possessed by a twin-stick demon. This frenetic shmup throws you into the ink-splattered chaos of the Animator’s twisted creations, where every dash, pound, and pixel-perfect dodge is a fight for Zoe’s peace and your leaderboard pride. With apples as currency and time as your enemy, ZOE Begone! is a glorious mashup of vintage animation and arcade aggression that demands your full attention and your best reflexes.

ZOE Begone! Review Pros

• Decent cartoon-like graphics. 
• 276.2MB download size. 
• Platinum trophy. 
• Own in-game achievements, like a system called feats. 
• Game settings – language, pitch wobble, pen squeaks, multiplier bar, enemy indicator, button map, enemy map, dash effect, dash squiggles, screenshake, and blur effects. 
• Controller settings – two presets that change the sticks around, and you get Deadzone sliders. 
• Sound sliders for music and sfx. 
• Online leaderboards with filters for difficulties, modes, and arcade. 
• Shmup gameplay. 
• Optional tutorial menu. 
• Three game modes – Arcade, time attack, and frame trap. 
• Each film is made up of three reels and a boss. 
• Pro tips section with extra tips and tricks. 
• Three game difficulties – Easy, Normal and Hard. 
• Energy is used for the ability to fly. Charging through enemies will cause energy to go down, but you can get energy back by collecting the limited energy pills. 
• 2D animated game world. 
• Shooting model – when flying, you can only shoot left and right; when on the ground, you can shoot in 5 directions. 
• Five films to play through, and once you finish a film, you get a film selection to replay. 
• Shooting can be done with a button, or it auto-fires when you use the right stick. 
• Health bar system, and you can refill it by popping the limited green triangles in the world. 
• Apples drop from enemies, and you use them to get upgrades and power-ups. Apples decrease in value over time. 
• You pop items by flying and then pounding the floor. You can time it so you bounce across multiples. 
• When you pop things like energy and health, it will cause a soul to splat onto the screen. Pounding the floor near apples will auto-collect a huge amount in one go. 
• The shop appears twice between reels in each level. 
• You can choose to bank apples or spend them in the shop. 
• All power-ups and charge attacks take energy, so you have to make sure you get energy to not only keep the attacks going, but if a power-up runs out of ammo, you lose that power-up. 
• The enemies in the game are like squiggles and dots going around the screen; they can hurt you by shooting, but also by hitting you themselves. 
• Side-scrolling game world that loops round on itself. 
• Bi,g clever boss fight mechanics and animations. 
• The game really dials in the art aesthetics with a brush coming in and drawing enemies, colour splattering over. 
• Combo counter. 
• Many weapon types, and I do like the ammo urgency mechanic. 
• There is a layer of depth that can easily be missed, which is that the multiplier works and increases by how you kill enemies, bouncing off multiples, etc and each enemy type can also give different multiplier amounts. 
• The bar at the bottom right is actually a map, a crude, simple one, but it helps you find objectives, etc. 

ZOE Begone! Review Cons

• You cannot remap the controls. 
• There is no Colourblind support, and the game has a lot of colour. 
• Time attack and frame trap need to be unlocked first. 
• It took a while to get used to the flying and ground controls, as even though it’s simple, I had a hard time getting them to work efficiently. 
• Very chaotic and busy, making it hard to pick out enemy projectiles and even enemies themselves, this does get better over time, however. 
• The shooting doesn’t feel as good and tight as I would like; I feel like I never have the angle on enemies. 

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ZOE Begone!

Official Website:

Developer: Retchy Games

Publisher: PM Studios, Inc.

Store Link:

PlayStation