Penalty Kicks — Play Free Online

Penalty Kicks is a football shootout game reduced to its tensest moment: one player, one ball, one goalkeeper and a few metres of grass between them. There is no build-up play, no tactics screen and no match to manage. Each attempt comes down to a single decision about where you put the ball, and a single moment of timing about when you let it go.

That makes it a different kind of fit for a site built around Doodle Jump. Both games are about one precise input repeated over and over, and both reward staying calm after a miss. A run here takes a minute or two, so it works as a quick break between longer sessions, and it loads in the browser with nothing to install.

How to play

The game lists these controls: the arrow keys or WASD to move, and the mouse to aim and select. On a phone or tablet you tap and swipe instead. In practice that means you line up your shot with the pointer or a swipe, commit to a corner, and then watch whether the keeper reads you correctly.

As in any shootout, the goal is to score more than the keeper saves. A shot straight down the middle is the easiest one for a keeper to stop, so aiming for the sides gives you more room for error to work in your favour, though aiming too close to the post risks sending it wide.

Tips

• Take your first few shots to learn how far the aim moves for each movement of the mouse or finger, before worrying about the score.
• Vary where you shoot. If you pick the same corner every time, the keeper will start to cover it.
• On a touch screen, make one clean swipe rather than several small adjustments, which tend to wobble the aim.
• Use the fullscreen button under the game if the goal looks small on your display.

Similar games on Doodle Jump

If you want another sports title, Bouncy Basketball swaps the shootout for a physics-driven one-on-one where positioning matters as much as aim. For something with a similar one-more-try feel, Helix Jump asks for timing as you drop down a tower, and Bird Jumper keeps the vertical-climbing idea of Doodle Jump itself.

Penalty Kicks suits short sessions on a keyboard, a mouse or a touch screen, and it is easy to hand to someone else for a turn.