Online Penalty Kicks Game

A one-goal lead does not always end a penalty shootout. The opponent may still have a kick that can draw the scores level. In football, a shootout settles a drawn contest when a winner is required, with the teams alternating attempts rather than starting another period of open play.

Early clinch

The opening allocation is five kicks per team, but play stops once one team cannot catch the other even by scoring all its remaining kicks.

Sudden death

A tie after five kicks each leads to further pairs. A winner needs more goals after equal numbers of attempts, not merely the first goal of a pair.

Three goals therefore do not automatically win a shootout. A save removes an opponent’s scoring opportunity without adding a goal to the goalkeeper’s own total. Keeping goals and attempts separate makes a narrow lead, a missed chance and the importance of the next kick easier to understand.

For the shooter, aim identifies where the ball is intended to finish. Scatter is the variation around that point, while keeper reach describes how far a dive can cover. A precise attempt can be saved when it meets that coverage; a scattered attempt can escape it or leave the goal entirely.

Arcade aiming games can express the power tradeoff by reducing keeper reach while increasing scatter. A stronger shot is not automatically a better one, and a keeper who anticipates the intended target can still be beaten by scatter. These simplified rules make placement and risk the decisions to judge, rather than treating a game score as a measure of real football ability.

How to Use This Tool:

You take both roles against the computer. The opening setup is Standard, Shoot first and the replay seed kickoff. There is no reaction timer.

1. Choose Difficulty and Kick order, then keep or replace the Replay seed before selecting Start shootout. A seed needs 1 to 64 characters after surrounding spaces are removed. A blank or spaces-only seed keeps the start button disabled.
2. Select one of the six goal targets on your shooting turns, choose Place, Drive or Blast, then press Take the shot. Place has no scatter, Drive adds limited scatter, and Blast can send the ball outside the goal.
3. Choose a dive target when the computer is shooting, then press Dive & reveal. You choose where to cover before seeing the computer’s shot and power. With Save first, this is your first playing action.
4. Continue with Next kick · shoot or Next kick · save after the result appears. Every new kick resets the selected target to Low centre, and every new shooting turn starts with Place. Selections remain locked while the previous kick is being shown.
5. Review the final score and open Kick review when the shootout ends. Replay same seed keeps the seed and setup, New seed keeps the setup with a fresh seed, and Change setup reopens the starting choices.

Targets and buttons support mouse, touch and keyboard activation. Use Tab to focus a button and Enter to activate it. When the game area itself has focus, keys 1 to 3 select the top row from left to right, and 4 to 6 select the low row.

Select Pause, or press P while the game area has focus, to stop at the current kick. Switching tabs or moving focus to another window also pauses play. Resume continues that kick, while Restart round starts the shootout over with the same seed and setup.

Interpreting Results:

You and Computer count goals, not attempts. A goal adds one to the shooter’s score; saved and off target use a kick without adding a goal. When the computer’s shot is saved, that is a successful stop for you. The final number of kicks combines both players’ attempts.

For the same shot target and keeper target, Place and Drive produce the same result. Neither can miss, and both are saved exactly when those targets match. Blast changes that simple matching rule, so the power labels should not be read as a guaranteed increase in scoring chance.

The hand marks the selected dive point, not the full area the keeper can reach. To understand a surprising save or goal, open Decision details in Kick review and compare the Ball coordinates with the keeper’s target and reach. Judge the recorded finishing position rather than whether the ball and hand icons appear to touch.

Technical Details:

A kick is decided by its finishing point and the distance to the keeper’s chosen dive point. The goal is a rectangle 600 game units wide and 300 high. Horizontal coordinates increase to the right, and vertical coordinates increase downward. These are game coordinates, not physical goal dimensions.

Off-target shots, saves and goals

The checks run in this order, so an off-target ball cannot become a save.

Points exactly on the rectangle’s boundary count as inside. There is no separate post collision or allowance for the drawn ball’s size.

Targets, scatter and keeper reach

The left, centre and right target centres have horizontal coordinates 100, 300 and 500. Top targets have vertical coordinate 75; low targets have vertical coordinate 225. The selected target supplies the intended ball position or the centre of the keeper’s saving area.

The shaded circle is the saving area for one dive point at reach 55. Other targets remain outside that circle.

Shot power sets both the scatter limit and the keeper’s reach. Reach is a radius around the dive point. Difficulty changes only the computer goalkeeper’s radius, not your goalkeeper’s coverage. All values in the table are game units.

Each ball coordinate equals its target coordinate plus a seeded offset from −D to +D, inclusive. Here D is the maximum scatter in the table, a and b are the target’s horizontal and vertical coordinates, and U and V are the first and second Scatter draws recorded in Decision details.

The mod operation takes the remainder after division. With zero scatter, both offsets are zero. Coordinates and reach stay in whole game units; no decimal rounding is used to decide a kick.

For an on-target ball at (x, y), a save occurs when the squared distance to the keeper at (kₓ, kᵧ) is at most the squared reach R:

Equality is a save. For example, a keeper centred at (100, 75) with reach 55 saves a ball finishing at (155, 75). A ball finishing one unit farther right at (156, 75) is a goal.

Why Place and Drive score alike

A placed ball is at least 150 units from every other target centre, beyond the largest Place reach of 135. A Drive offset of 40 on both axes still remains inside the smallest Drive reach of 65 when the keeper chooses the same target. From a different target, the closest possible Drive endpoint is 110 units away, beyond even the largest Drive reach of 105. Both powers also stay entirely within the goal.

Blast is different because its 110-unit scatter can carry the ball beyond a correctly chosen keeper’s radius or outside the goal. Changing difficulty can therefore change results for your Blast shots, but not for your Place or Drive shots. It does not change the computer’s target selection or your keeper’s reach.

Clinching and sudden death

During the initial five kicks per player, an early winner needs more goals than the opponent could still reach by converting every remaining attempt:

G_L is the leader’s goals, G_O the opponent’s goals, and N_O the opponent’s attempts already taken. The comparison is strictly greater, not equal. Leading 5–3 after your fifth kick and the computer’s fourth clinches the round; leading 4–3 at those same attempt counts leaves the computer one chance to equalise.

After five kicks each, unequal scores produce a winner. A tie continues into sudden death, where a lead becomes decisive only after both players have taken the same number of kicks. Both scoring or both failing keeps the contest going. If the score is still tied after 20 attempts each, the round ends as Honours even. A winner can still be decided by the twentieth pair.

Alternating kicks, early clinches and equal-attempt tie-breaking follow Law 10 of the International Football Association Board (IFAB). The six-target geometry, power effects and draw limit are arcade variations. Offences and retakes are not modelled.

FAQ:

References:

• Laws of the Game 2026/27, Law 10: Determining the Outcome of a Match, The IFAB.