ZOE Begone! Interview: A Chat with Solo Dev Graeme Hawkins of Retchy Games

gaming, interview, Retchy Games, Shmup, ZOE Begone

I was excited that the ZOE Begone! interview was my first one with Gamer Social Club. The game appeared on my radar at the London Game Fest earlier this year and just seemed to speak to me.

Solo developer, Graeme Hawkins, of Retchy Games, has been working hard on bringing to life this 1930s-inspired shoot ’em up, and it was released very recently (17 September 2025). And all that hard work has been paying off, releasing to great reviews, including one from ourselves!

Short of nearly robbing the dev of his work laptop (sorry about that) in the case of mistaken bag identity in the darkness of the demo areas, we thankfully remained in contact. I was keen to chat to him about bringing Zoe Begone! to life. Thankfully, Graeme doesn’t seem to be holding any sort of ill-will to that accident and very kindly answered some questions about his debut release!

ZOE Begone! was the highlight of my time at London Game Fest this year. For those who might not have seen the game, tell us a bit about it.

Thanks! It's a 2d side scrolling shoot "˜em up with looping arenas, a bit like Resogun or Fantasy Zone, and it's art style is really bold and colourful and inspired by draw-on-film animations of the 1930's and 40's, with the accompanying boogie-woogie piano soundtrack (by my mate, Tom Pegg). It's an arcade style game, fast paced with some bullet hell elements, online leaderboards and 3 different play modes to mix things up a bit.

What was the inspiration for the game?

I've been into shmups for a long time so when I decided to make a game it seemed like the obvious choice, as I had a good familiarity with the range of mechanics in the genre and felt I could hopefully rely on some of my instincts and preferences to make something that felt good and had a nice amount of depth. The visual side of it comes from my background as an animator, so I was able to lean into that as something a bit unique to help the game stand out.

Where did the name ZOE Begone! come from, what was the inspiration?

So it was originally just ZOE for most of development and it was a shortening of Zoetrope, as I originally had some zoetrope-like mechanics where instead of changing the background colour when you pop the energy refills, it would reveal a frame of an animation that would play out once you got them all. It was a bit convoluted tho so I dropped it quite early on, but the name stuck. Then when I signed with PM [Studios, publisher] I needed to change it to something trademark-able, and ZOE Begone felt like it belonged in the 1930s, and there's a Norman McLaren film called Begone Dull Care...

The game features a variety of art materials as the bosses in the game, was this a way to unleash some unresolved issues with the medium?

Haha, yeah I'm sure there's some weird subconscious Freudian analysis to be made there, but I can assure you I'm all good and at peace and just wanted to make a fun game, honest 🙂

How long have you been working on ZOE Begone!

I first started working on it in 2017, so it's been a long project. There've been ups and downs of course, I took about a year off at one point and nearly gave up just before PM Studios helped me out, but we got there in the end!

How tricky was it balancing the difficulty of the game?

It's really hard with that sort of thing, just because I obviously know the game inside out and have thousands of hours of playtime, so playtesting and getting feedback from others is really important. I've tried to make the difficulty fairly open to more casual / less experienced shmup players with the three difficulty modes and some of the power ups have an impact as well, but at the same time I do want there to be a decent challenge for more seasoned players.

Is there a particular enemy or Reel you're particularly fond of?

I was thinking about that recently actually, I tried to make each level feel quite distinct with their visuals and enemy types, and I think Film 4 is probably my favourite, with the Stamps and typography theme. It gets a bit chaotic but it feels really satisfying when you get to grips with it and start using the chains of mine explosions to take out certain enemies. My favourite enemy tho is probably the big "Spider" thing in Film 3 that spawns babies from its back when you shoot it, I had a lot of fun making that one!

Are they your hands?

Yes! My big sausage fingers do make an appearance.

Might we see more from Zoe in the future?

Hmmm, maybe an easter egg in my next game, but I definitely want to do something different next. I have some plans brewing, but I hope it won't be such a long project this time!