About Pie Cannon: Carnival Shootout
Pie Cannon is a fairground shooting gallery. Two belts run across the midway in opposite directions, wooden posts stand between you and them, and you tap a target to splat it with a pie. A duck is worth ten, a clay pigeon twenty-five, a gold star swinging on its wire fifty, and a prize teddy nothing at all: hit a teddy and it costs you a ticket, the same as letting a duck cross unsplatted. A third of a second passes before the cannon will fire again, so when three things are crossing at once and a post is covering one of them, the decision the game is actually asking for is which one to take first. A round is sixty seconds, or five tickets, whichever runs out first.
A stall never just asks for a score. It asks for a score and two other things — six gold stars, twenty splats in a row, ninety percent accuracy, no duck lost, the clock survived, no teddy touched — and each one you manage is a star. There are three on every stall and 150 down the whole midway. The stars are what open the next district, which is the part worth knowing before you start: a district unlocks on your star total rather than on beating the stall in front of it, so a stall that has you stuck is one you can leave at a single star and come back for. Nothing on the map is a wall.
Twenty-six of the fifty carry a named twist, printed before you commit to the stall rather than sprung on you inside it. One Rail stops the far belt. Clay Day runs the trap house. Starlight strings prizes along the wire, Prize Alley lets the prize wagon loose, Quick Draw hands you a lighter tin so the reload is shorter, and Slow Belt gears the machinery down. Every district ends with a headline prize that comes out thirty-six seconds in and does not break on one hit: a prize cup, a hamper riding the belt behind the posts, a carousel horse on its brass pole, the strongman’s bell in its yoke, and a gondola off the Ferris wheel, each taking three to five hits. Miss it and it is wheeled away, which costs you nothing except the chance at it. The five districts run from morning over the lagoon to a fair lit against a near-black sky: Sunrise Gates, The Long Midway, Carousel Green, Big Top Boulevard and Midnight Mile.
There are stars in this game and they are never spent, which is an odd thing to have to say on a site where a currency usually means a balance. Stars are won from the three goals on each stall and they stay won. They open the next district and they open the Prize Shelf — cherry, blueberry, custard, key lime, torched meringue, and a blue-ribbon rosette for a finished midway — and taking a pie costs nothing, because there is no transaction in the game to make it cost something. A pie changes what you fire and the mess it leaves, and not one number anywhere else. Around that there is Endless, open from the start with no clock and no target, sixteen badges earned by ordinary play, and one stall a day picked by the date and run from a fixed seed, so everyone everywhere gets the same round. The daily banks no stars; what it keeps is a run of days.
Your first round is walked through rather than explained. You play the real midway with the clock off and nothing able to cost you a ticket, taking 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. Those balloons are the power-ups, and taking one costs a shot you were going to spend on something else: Homing Cream, Slow Syrup, Big Pie, Rapid Fire and an Extra Ticket. The rules card stays in the pause menu afterwards for anyone who wants it.
It is free, there is nothing in it to buy, and it pays you nothing. No in-app purchases, no currency you can top up, no shop and no rewarded videos, so there is no part of the game that can be skipped with money and nothing that has to be watched to carry on. It is paid for by advertising kept outside the round: a banner on the menus, the map, the shelf and the record screen, and one full-screen ad moving from one stall to the next, which will not appear twice inside forty-five seconds. The sky is never covered while you are shooting. Every star, best score, badge and day of your streak lives on the device, there is no account and no email, and the game has a privacy policy of its own rather than the shared one.
Screenshots
How it plays
- Tap a duck to splat it — ten points, and twenty-five for a clay pigeon or fifty for a gold star.
- Leave the prize teddies alone. Splatting one costs a ticket, and so does letting a duck cross.
- Wait out the posts. A third of a second passes between shots, so the order you take things in is the game.
- Shoot a balloon for a power-up, knowing the shot could have gone on the duck about to leave.
- Finish the stall on score, and pick up the other two stars for how you did it.
Features
- Fifty stalls in five districts, from morning over the lagoon to a near-black sky
- Three goals on every stall and 150 stars down the midway
- Districts that open on your star total, so no stall can block the rest
- Twenty-six named twists — One Rail, Clay Day, Starlight, Prize Alley, Quick Draw, Slow Belt — printed before you commit
- A grand prize at the end of every district, taking three to five hits to break
- A guided first round on the real midway, with no clock and no way to lose
- Endless, open from the start, with no timer and nothing to reach
- One stall a day from a fixed seed, the same round for everyone, with a streak to keep
- A Prize Shelf of six pies that open at star totals and cost nothing to take
- Power-ups shot off balloons: Homing Cream, Slow Syrup, Big Pie, Rapid Fire and an Extra Ticket
- Sixteen badges
- No in-app purchases, no currency to top up, no shop and no rewarded videos
- Stars, scores, badges and the streak kept on the device, with no account
Frequently asked questions
Does Pie Cannon pay me anything?
No. It's a game rather than a reward app, so there's no balance, no redeem screen and no cash-out, and none of the payout arithmetic on the rest of this site applies to it. The stars in it are not money and are never even spent — they open districts and pies and then stay where they are. The apps that do pay are on their own page, at a published rate.
Is it free? What is the catch?
It's free and there's nothing to buy: no in-app purchases, no currency you can top up, no shop and no rewarded videos, so there's no part of it you can pay to skip and nothing you have to watch an ad to reach. It's paid for by advertising outside the round — a banner on the menus, and one full-screen ad between stalls that won't appear twice inside forty-five seconds. The sky is never covered while you're shooting.
What do I need to run it?
An Android phone or tablet. There's no iPhone version yet: version 1.0 went to App Review carrying the same build Google Play published and was still waiting on 18 September 2026, and we'd rather say that than sit a Download on the App Store button here that goes nowhere. Google Play doesn't print a download size for it, and since it isn't on the App Store there's no Apple figure to quote either — if you want a sense of what our apps weigh, we took the six that are on the App Store apart and published the numbers.
Can I get stuck on a stall?
Not in the way that usually ends a game like this. A district opens on the total number of stars you hold rather than on beating the stall in front of it, so a stall you can't clear is one you leave at a single star and come back for once you're better at it. That's the one design decision worth knowing before you start, because it changes what to do when the fortieth stall beats you: go round it.
What are the stars for, and can I buy them?
They open the next district and they open the pies on the Prize Shelf, and no, there's nothing anywhere in the game that sells them. You get three per stall — one for the score and two for whatever else that stall asked for — and 150 in total. They're also never spent: taking a pie doesn't deduct anything, so every star you've won still counts toward everything ahead of it.
Is there an iPhone version?
Not yet. Pie Cannon is on Google Play only, which makes it one of three things we publish that Android has and iPhone does not — the others are Peel Frenzy and Asteroid Duel, all three of them games. Everything else we make is on both stores, except Community Stress First Aid, which is the one that runs the other way round.
Is it suitable for children?
Google Play rates it Everyone with a Mild Fantasy Violence descriptor, which here means throwing a pie at a wooden duck. It's one of two things we publish carrying a content descriptor at all; the other is Asteroid Duel. There's nothing to buy, so nothing a child can spend money on, and nothing in it is locked behind watching an ad. What it does carry is a banner on the menus and a full-screen ad between stalls, and that's the thing to know before handing a phone over.
Do my stars and badges follow me to a new phone?
No. Stars, best scores, badges and the daily streak stay on the device, the same way the coin balances in our reward apps do. There's no account to sign into, so there's nothing to sync and nothing to lose to a forgotten password — and nothing of value at stake either, since the stars were never worth money in the first place.
