‘ZOE Begone!’ – A Bullet Hell Rush to Get Some Sleep

ZOE Begone! is a frantic bullet-hell with a bunch of hand-drawn enemies all attacking you when you just want to have a rest.

Your character, a little triangle, wants to get some rest. However, an animator has made a bunch of different frames of characters that you will need to eliminate before you sleep. These looping arenas of film are full of enemies that you can shoot at and dash through. However you do have a set amount of energy that depletes when dashing or flying.

This means that you need to manage the time you are flying and dashing with the enemies that are coming at you. However, there are blue orbs at the bottom along with health orbs that you can dash and collect to keep yourself going.

Everything in this game feels chaotic and wild, with bullets flying and enemies dashing at you. Even so, there is something really charming about the look of the game which might even draw you in and make you think it’s less challenging then it actually is until you play it. Thakfully, there is a shop where you can spend the apples that you collect on upgrades, making things a bit easier and more manageable.

ZOE Begone! is one of those games that sort of becomes muscle memory, but I really do like how the arena changes over time. Some of your dashes remove color from the background and destroying enemies takes away from the frames of the animation that are currently being created. There is an interesting and exciting view of the world that seems like so much fun to dive into. I got the chance to play a demo at The Mix, which, even for someone that doesn’t play a lot of bullet-hells, felt really engaging.

ZOE Begone! is currently in development, but in the meantime, you can grab a demo from Steam and add it to your Wishlist.

About The Author

Jupiter Hadley

Jupiter is a prolific indie game journalist, writing for Metro UK, Big Boss Battle, AlphaBetaGamer, and many more, all with a focus on smaller indie gems. She covers thousands of game jams and indie games on her YouTube channel, letting every game have a moment in the spotlight. She runs indiegamejams.com, a calendar of all of the game jams going on in the world, judges many jams and events.