Cannonball

You can dress them up in fancy 3D graphics and tie them together with overblown cut-scenes, but you can’t escape the fact that first-person shooters are little different from the fairground shooting galleries that have been around for a century or so.

The principle is identical – targets pop up, you take aim and attempt to hit them for points and prizes.

Cannonball drops the façade and looks to replicate the classic fairground point ‘n’ shoot experience in all its colour and glory.

Shiver me touchscreen

This pays off most obviously on an aesthetic level. Pirate-themed wooden cut-outs bob past in a convincingly low-tech mechanical fashion, as if you were at some mid-twentieth century carnival.

The setting instantly triggers the desire to pelt these ships and seagulls with something – and Polarbit duly obliges by giving you a mini-cannon to let loose with. By touching the screen you can send off an arcing shot to specific points.

The skill comes in judging the pace of your target. Because your shots don’t hit home instantaneously, you have to lead your targets, taking into account how fast they’re travelling.

Bonus balls

Adding a further layer of skill is the point-balls that hang from most of the targets. A giant squid might pop up with multiple 200-point bonuses hanging from its waggling tentacles, while the sun passes overhead sporting a further 100 points.

Hitting these bonus targets (the higher value they are, the smaller and thus harder to hit) sets them loose, at which point they drop into a series of bonus multiplier buckets at the bottom of the screen. It’s another neat nod to the kind of classic physical games that preceded video games.

Cannonball is a fine addition to the rapidly expanding casual game catalogue on Android. While the concept is far from revolutionary, and the game would have benefited from a few additional scenarios, the level of skill it brings to the shooting gallery format will keep you coming back for more.