How to play Penalty Shootout (Sút Luân Lưu): swipe to shoot, dive to save

Shooting with a swipe, power and curl, keeping goal with the arrows and Dive, sudden death and tips, for 2 players.

Updated 24 October 2026

A penalty shootout is football at its most nervous: one striker, one goalkeeper, eleven metres, and a ball that takes less than a second to get there. In Vietnamese it is called sút luân lưu.

In GatherPlay's Penalty Shootout two friends take turns as striker and goalkeeper, each on their own phone held sideways. Every kick plays out in 3D on both phones, with a slow replay. The server keeps the striker's aim secret until the ball is struck and decides every kick, so nobody can peek.

The goal

Score more penalties than the other player. Each player shoots five times by default, or three in a quick game, and you swap roles after every kick.

Shooting

1. Put your finger on the screen and swipe up towards the goal. Where the swipe ends is where you aim: further left or right for the corners, higher for the top of the net.
2. Swipe fast for a hard shot. A hard shot reaches the line sooner, so the keeper has less time, but it strays further from where you aimed and sometimes goes wide or over the bar.
3. Swipe in a curve to curl the ball. It swings out the way your swipe bends and comes back to where it ends, so the keeper reads it late.
4. A slow, steep swipe chips the ball softly. It beats a keeper who dives early, and it is easy to catch for one who waits.
5. While you swipe, a yellow ring on the goal shows where the ball can land. The bigger the ring, the more the shot can stray.
6. You have 10 seconds by default. When the time runs out, the game kicks a plain shot for you.

Keeping goal

1. Your phone looks over your keeper's shoulder at the striker. Hold ◀ or ▶ to slide along the line while the striker aims. The striker can see where you stand, so standing a little off centre can tempt them into the bigger side.
2. When the striker runs up you stand still: no more sliding.
3. Once the ball is struck, tap ◀ or ▶ to dive that way at once, or press Dive to jump straight up for a shot down the middle. During the run-up you can guess: hold an arrow and press Dive.
4. You dive once per kick. Too early and the ball goes where you were, too late and you can't reach it. A slow ball is caught, a hard one is pushed away.

Winning and sudden death

• The shootout stops as soon as one player can no longer catch up, as in a real one.
• Level after the regular kicks? Sudden death: one kick each, until one scores and the other doesn't.
• After ten rounds of sudden death the game ends in a draw.
• A player who leaves loses the game.

Tips

• Hard into the corner is the hardest to save, but it misses the most. Medium power into the corner is a safe middle.
• Mix it up. A keeper who has watched you curl to the left three times will wait there.
• Keeper: watch the ball, not the striker. You see the run-up first, then the ball; dive as it starts to swing.
• Keeper: diving early is a guess. Sometimes it is the right guess, and a chip down the middle punishes it.

Playing apart

Two phones are all you need, even in different cities. The game makes up for a slow connection, up to 150 ms, so the keeper sees the whole shot in time. A small chip at the bottom of your screen shows the delay; on a very slow one it suggests Wi-Fi.

Start a game

1. Open GatherPlay and host a Penalty Shootout game. A TV is optional: if you open the game screen on one, the room watches from a broadcast camera.
2. The two players join with the code or the QR code and turn their phones sideways.
3. Pick the kicks each and the time to shoot, and start.