Pie Cannon: Carnival Games

Carnival games: fifty shooting-gallery stalls, and every one wants three things from you.

Pie Cannon is a shooting gallery. Ducks ride two belts running across the midway in opposite directions, wooden posts stand between you and them, and you tap a duck to splat it with a pie. A duck is worth ten, a clay pigeon twenty-five, a gold star swinging on its wire fifty, a prize teddy nothing at all: splat somebody's teddy and it costs a ticket, the same as letting a duck slip past. A third of a second passes before you can tap again, so with several things crossing at once and a post in the way of one of them, which you tap first is the whole game. Sixty seconds or five tickets, whichever runs out first.

YOUR FIRST ROUND IS WALKED THROUGH
Not a wall of rules before the door opens. You play the real midway with the clock off and nothing able to cost you a ticket, one line of coaching at a time: tap a duck, feel the reload, wait out a duck behind a post, leave the teddy alone, catch a clay, take a star off its wire, shoot a balloon. The rules card stays in the pause menu afterwards.

THREE GOALS ON EVERY STALL
A stall never just asks for a score. It asks for one AND two other things — six gold stars, twenty in a row, 90% accuracy, no ducks lost, the clock survived, no teddy touched. Each one you manage is a star. Three a stall, 150 across the fair.

WALK PAST THE ONE YOU CAN'T BEAT
A district opens when your star total pays its way in, not when you have beaten the stall before it. A stall that has you stuck is one you leave at a single star and come back for. Nothing on the map is a wall.

TWENTY-SIX STALLS THAT DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT
A stall is not the one before it run a little faster. Half the midway carries a named twist, printed before you commit. One Rail: the far belt is stopped. Clay Day: the trap house is running. Starlight: prizes strung along the wire. Prize Alley: the prize wagon came loose. Quick Draw: a lighter tin, so you reload faster. Slow Belt: the machinery is geared down.

EVERY DISTRICT ENDS WITH A PRIZE
Thirty-six seconds into a district's last stall, its headline prize comes out — and it does not break on one hit. The Prize Cup on its wire, the Hamper riding the belt behind the posts, the Carousel Horse on its brass pole, the Strongman's Bell in its yoke, a gondola off the Ferris wheel. Three hits to five. Miss it and it is wheeled away, costing you nothing but the chance.

FIVE DISTRICTS, ONE LONG DAY
Sunrise Gates, The Long Midway, Carousel Green, Big Top Boulevard, Midnight Mile — morning over the lagoon through to the fair lit against a near-black sky. Every stall lays out its own booths, posts and weather.

TODAY'S STALL
One stall a day, picked by the date and played from a fixed seed, so everyone gets the same round. It banks no stars; what it keeps is a run of days.

THE PRIZE SHELF
Six pies: cherry, blueberry, custard, key lime, torched meringue, and a blue-ribbon rosette for a finished midway. They open at star totals, nothing is spent to take one, and they change the pie and the mess it leaves, not one number.

POWER-UPS YOU SHOOT
Homing Cream, Slow Syrup, Big Pie, Rapid Fire, Extra Ticket, drifting past on balloons. Taking one costs a shot: the balloon, or the duck about to cross out of reach.

WHAT IT COSTS: NOTHING
No in-app purchases, no currency, no shop, and no rewarded videos. Stars are earned by playing better, power-ups are shot out of the sky, and pies open on the stars you hold — none has a price and none can be bought.

It is free and paid for by advertising, kept where it belongs: a banner on the menus, and one full-screen advert moving from one stall to the next. The sky is never covered mid-round, and nothing is locked behind watching one.

Every star, best score, badge and day of your streak lives on the device and nowhere else. No account, no email, nothing lost to a forgotten password.