Penalty Shootout

Penalty Shootout puts you behind the spot in a full stadium at dusk. The sky burns orange over the roofline, four banks of floodlights throw a flare across the lens, and a bowl of thirty thousand people painted as a mosaic waves around the ground and lifts coloured cards when a goal goes in. In front of you: mown stripes running away toward a chunky keeper with oversized gloves and a face that tells you exactly what he thinks of your last effort.

Taking the kick is one gesture. Swipe toward the corner you want; how far you drag sets the power, and a curl in the swipe puts bend on the ball so it starts outside the post and comes back in. The power meter shows the risk in plain colours — hit it too hard and it climbs over the bar, too soft and the keeper has all the time he needs to get down. Keeping is the other half of the mind game: choose one of the six zones while the taker runs up, and you have a sliver of a second after the strike to shift one zone if you read it early. Match the zone and it is saved, go next door and you get a glove on it, which is not the same thing as keeping it out.

Play it two-up on one phone laid flat between you — the taker swipes on their half, the keeper taps the corners on theirs, the far player's scoreboard turned upside down so it reads the right way round — and swap roles after every kick. On your own there is a computer that keeps and takes at Easy, Normal or Sharp, and Sharp learns which corner you keep going for and starts leaning that way before you have hit it. There is a thirty-second quick-fire round for as many goals as you can manage, eight kit colours, four ways to paint the crowd, replays of the best saves, and sudden death when five each is not enough to separate you.