Best Shooter Games on Apple Arcade in 2023

Enter The Gungeon on iPhone X
Enter The Gungeon on iPhone X (Image credit: Luke Filipowicz / iMore)

Sometimes when you play games, you want a deep story, with interesting visuals, and excellent character development, other times, you want to shoot as many enemies as you possibly can. This list is for the people who enjoy the latter.

While shooting games on Apple Arcade are not the most popular genre, some insanely great titles are worth a look if you love shooting baddies and kicking ass. Here are our favorite shooter games on Apple Arcade right now!

Exit the Gungeon

Exit the Gungeon

Source: Devolver (Image credit: Source: Devolver)

This is the follow-up to the highly popular Enter the Gungeon, except now you're doing the opposite: getting out of there, ASAP! Since the previous Gungeoneers were successful, the Gungeon is now a paradox and collapsing in on itself, and you need to Exit the Gungeon.

You'll need to make your way through each elevator shaft level and fight off hordes of demons with your single, everchanging weapon. It starts off as a simple peashooter, but as you blast your foes away, the gun will evolve every few moments, giving you even more awesome abilities and range, or it may be worse, and you'll just have to learn to adapt.

As you're stuck in the elevator fending off the enemies with your everchanging weapon, you'll need to make sure to roll through their attacks and dodge what you can. You're only able to take so much damage before it's a failure, so you'll need solid platforming skills and quick reflexes in order to survive.

BattleSky Brigade: Harpooner

Battlesky Harpooner Ipad Screens

Battlesky Harpooner Ipad Screens (Image credit: BattleBrew)

This game definitely has a bit of a child-like flair to it, making it great for kids, and the difficulty level is a great mix of challenging enough not to be boring, but easy enough never to be too frustrating.

No top of shooting barrels open and dodging obstacles, the game always has a slight "fishing" mechanic that requires you to reel yourself to different spots to collect the items you find as you blast barrels to bits.

You even get to unlock new weapons, new levels, and new challenges as the game progresses, so there's even more to explore as the game goes on.

Explottens

Explottens

Source: WeRplay (Image credit: Source: WeRplay)

In Explottens, the land of Catmandu is celebrating the end of the battle of Kittysburg. Evil kitties of KLAW laid siege to Catmandu in an effort to overthrow the democratically elected government and rule it with their iron paw. However, a group of heroic cats named KIT created a hero, who wiped out KLAW. But while the celebration goes on, it seems KLAW isn't done just yet.

Explottens features bullet-hell shmup action, and you control a feline hero of your choice as they zip, boost, and shoot their way through the skies. There are missions to complete, sidekicks to recruit to help you out in battle, and a ton of weapons and upgrades to make you even stronger.

The only negative thing about the game is the fact that it can be a bit too hard for some. Plus, the difficulty levels make it so you would need to upgrade your starting weapons, which are crappy, instead of saving up for something better. This isn't a game for the faint of feline hearts.

Sayonara Wild Hearts

Sayonara Wild Hearts

Source: Annapurna Interactive (Image credit: Source: Annapurna Interactive)

In a nutshell, Sayonara Wild Hearts is a game about the heartbreak of a young woman, which disturbs the balance of the world. A diamond butterfly appears in her dreams, leading our unnamed heroine to a highway in the sky, where she finds and becomes her other self: a masked biker called The Fool.

The gameplay of Sayonara Wild Hearts consists of riding motorcycles or skateboards, flying through a fast-paced dreamland, participating in frantic dance battles, shooting lasers from your bike, wielding swords, and collecting hearts. You're just in charge of steering The Fool in the "lanes" on the screen and pushing buttons at the right moment to perform dodges and attacks when needed. Even though it doesn't explicitly state that it supports controllers, I had no issues using my DualShock 4 controllers to play.

While the game doesn't have a lot of shooting, it's a fantastic, critically acclaimed game for a reason — there's no else quite like it!

Star Fetched

Star Fetched

Star Fetched (Image credit: Crescent Moon Games)

On the surface, Star Fetched is a bit of a mixed bag in terms of gameplay. It plays a lot like a 2D platformer, but it has RPG, tower defense, and shoot elements added to the mix to keep the gameplay interesting.

You play as Rhys Randall, who is mysteriously transported away to an alien world. With limited gear and weapons to defend yourself against the dangers of this strange place, you must gather materials to build a ship and get off the planet.

Chase those dreams and high scores

You can always trust iMore. Our team of Apple experts have years of experience testing all kinds of tech and gadgets, so you can be sure our recommendations and criticisms are accurate and helpful. Find out more about how we test.

Apple Arcade has a little bit of everything, including some awesome retro arcade goodness. These are some of the ones we've been playing, and they're pretty enjoyable, for the most part.

For a classic feeling platformer shooter, you'll definitely want to check out Exit the Gungeon, and maybe Enter the Gungeon too! To get something your kids would be okay to play without gore and extreme violence BattleSky Brigade: Harpooner is a great choice. Whichever game you start with, these all offer a great time and something a little different from the last.

Luke Filipowicz
Staff Writer

Luke Filipowicz has been a writer at iMore, covering Apple for nearly a decade now. He writes a lot about Apple Watch and iPad but covers the iPhone and Mac as well. He often describes himself as an "Apple user on a budget" and firmly believes that great technology can be affordable if you know where to look. Luke also heads up the iMore Show — a weekly podcast focusing on Apple news, rumors, and products but likes to have some fun along the way. 


Luke knows he spends more time on Twitter than he probably should, so feel free to follow him or give him a shout on social media @LukeFilipowicz.