Penalty Champs 22 is a soccer-simulation game that focuses on penalty-shot playoffs between countries. Whether the player calls the game soccer, football, footie or footy, they must successfully make goals as a penalty kicker and saves as a goalkeeper.
They begin by choosing to represent a country in a group of four countries across eight groups or one country against everyone else. If they choose the latter, the game tracks points, wins, losses and other stats in vertical columns rather than with a bracket diagram.
The game doesn't make kicking or stopping the ball easy for the player. From the kicker perspective, the player must adjust three settings represented with soccer balls on bars that rapidly move to readjust the possible final positions of the ball and the speed of the shot. They must select the options they want before the balls move out of position. From the goalie perspective, the player must wait until the last moment when the kicker kicks to see a target to direct the onscreen goalkeeper to block the shot. If they don't make the right choices quickly enough, they might kick the ball outside of the net or miss blocking a shot, respectively.
To win Penalty Champs 22, the player needs their group to successfully make it through the final bracket round or their country to complete the tournament with the highest overall score.
