The Arcslinger is one of the early games on the Daydream VR platform. While it was not there on day 1, it is great that it found its way to the Play Store early on.

The Arcslinger is a classic arcade shooter situated in a fantasy cartoon world that was heavily inspired by old Western movies. You and your mythical gun Angelheart, that is able to talk and quite humourous, must take down the evil Gold Smoke and his dangerous gang of cowboy animals in order to save the world.

Gameplay

The game puts you in the first person perspective of the hero. You hold the gun in your right hand and it follows all of your motion controller movements quite well. Very comparable to the shooter classic Time Crisis, your enemies pop out from everywhere and either shoot at you from a distance or advance and try to attack you in close combat. Unlike the Sega classic, you do not move at all but stay put in each level until you have shot down all of your enemies that come at you in 3 consecutive waves in each level.

Defeated enemies will leave coins or health packages that are essential in order to survive the onslaught of enemies trying to end your virtual life.

Your mythical gun plays a special role in Arcslinger. It can receive magical upgrades called Arcs that give it special powers once activated by slinging the gun in special ways. You can sling your gun by swiping over the Daydream touchpad in certain directions and need to follow certain patterns to activate the different arcs. You could think of it like the special moves in Streetfighter that allow Ryu & Co. to perform their special moves. It’s a very cool gameplay idea for a shooter and something that really lets The Arcslinger stand out. The action gets very frantic, because you don’t just need to aim at all the enemies that can pop out from all the different directions, you also need to sling your gun around in the right ways to activate your special powers in order to advance as much as possible.

This game will give you a good challenge since you really need to master your arcs in order to beat it. There are no save games and once your health meter goes to zero you are buried and you need to start all over again from the beginning. The developers really want you to become master gunslingers in order to win!

Unfortunately there are no highscores to beat or online leaderboards to compete with friends about who got furthest. For sure that would add another layer of motivation that is missing from the game right now.

Presentation

The Arcslinger looks great! You can tell immediately that the developers have put a lot of time and passion into the designs. The cartoon style works very well and the different stages look believable and fit into the mythical Arcslinger Western universe. Slinging your gun and seing it upgrade itself with the different arcs is a pleasure to look at.

Immersion

The Arcslinger is made from the ground up for VR and you can easily tell. Looking into this mythical world from the first perspective lets you fully immerse yourself into it. You are the Arcslinger and you prove it with each enemy you destroy and celebrate it with each time you sling your gun in glorious VR. You will need to move your head around quite a lot because enemies can come from a wide range of directions. While other games may also work on a flat screen, this game is just perfect for VR. You become the Arcslinger!

Comfort

Since there is no movement at all the comfort levels for playing The Arcslinger are very high. There is no problem with comfort whatsoever. Everything just feels right and fun, you want to be in this world and shoot some animal cowboys!

Final Thoughts

The Arcslinger is a great game that is easy to pick up and play. You will have lots of fun in this charming world of talking guns and shooting animals! Mastering the arc slings puts another layer of depths into the gameplay and guarantees for frantic shooting sessions that offer a good degree of challenge. There is still room for improvement though. It would be great to have multiplayer options as well as online leaderboards, but probably we might see that in The Arcslinger 2? Until then: happy slinging!