Penalty Shoot Out: Cup Mania

Penalty Shoot Out: Cup Mania Game Review

Evoplay once again invites you to enter into the blinding stadium floodlights, with the roaring crowd falling silent as you’re about to determine their destiny with your penalty execution. Penalty Shoot Out: Cup Mania builds on the original Penalty Shoot Out, but offers a beefed-up math model with far more penalty shots. You can even look forward to a proper bonus round this time, albeit only via the bonus buy menu.

As before, you start by choosing your preferred national team, and the goalkeeper’s national team is then randomly assigned. Next, you need to choose your preferred bet level, which ranges from €0.1 to €7,500 in Penalty Shoot Out: Cup Mania. This expanded bet range should satisfy both penny punters, high rollers, and anyone in between. Once that’s all settled, you start the game by either clicking on the ball or on where you want the ball to go. The outcome is random either way, but in my view, it’s more fun to aim yourself instead of letting the game aim for you.

Penalty Shoot Out: Cup Mania - Game Screen

The goalie will either save your shot, or you will score, and each consecutive goal moves you along the bet multiplier trail seen above the game area. In the base game of Penalty Shoot Out: Cup Mania, this is the full bet multiplier trail: 1.1x, 1.3x, 1.6x, 2x, 2.3x, 2.8x, 5x, 10x, 25x, 50x, 80x, 125x, 250x, 500x, and 1000x. In other words, you need to shoot a successful penalty 15 times in a row to hit the highest bet multiplier. Don’t worry, though, as you can cash out at any time to get the bet multiplier you have achieved at that point.

What makes the Penalty Shoot Out: Cup Mania game stand out from its predecessor, and many similar games, is the inclusion of a bonus round. Unfortunately, this bonus round is only available as a bonus buy feature, excluding players from the UK and certain other regions. The bet multipliers range from 3x to 3,000x during this feature, and the multiplier does not reset if you miss. Overall, this is a high volatility game, depending on your base game strategy. However, the bonus game volatility is low, while the bonus game RTP of 96.16% is a bit lower than the 96.65% RTP you get in the main game.

Penalty Shoot Out: Cup Mania Features

There is only one bonus feature to cover in this game, and you can try it yourself by checking the Penalty Shoot Out: Cup Mania free play demo at the top of this page. Below, we will walk you through how it works.

Bonus Round Buy Feature (not UK)

The only way into the bonus round in Penalty Shoot Out: Cup Mania is to purchase it from the dedicated bonus buy menu. Simply hit the green shopping cart button and pay 30x your stake to get 15 penalty shots. There are 2 main differences compared to the regular base game. First of all, the bet multiplier range is now far more favorable, starting at 3x and going as high as 3,000x your stake.

Secondly, the bet multiplier does not reset when the goalkeeper saves your penalty as it does in the base game. Instead, you remain at the current bet multiplier you have achieved, and the next successful shot takes you to the next bet multiplier. Here’s an overview of the bonus round bet multiplier range: 3x, 5x, 7x, 9x, 12x, 21x, 35x, 45x, 60x, 80x, 100x, 250x, 500x, 1,500x, and 3,000x. As you can see, it increments more quickly to higher numbers than the bet multiplier range in the base game.

Theme & Graphics

Penalty Shoot Out: Cup Mania takes you right onto the pitch at that nervous moment when the ball is resting at the penalty mark and the whole stadium is holding its breath in anticipation. The goalie stands at the ready, making himself as big and scary as possible, revealing his keeper glove palms to hint where he hopes your penalty will end. The ball starts spinning to build momentum as you click it, before being hurled towards the goal at a random angle. The tension builds as the goalie throws himself to catch it, and the crowd goes wild when it hits the back of the net.

Penalty Shoot Out: Cup Mania - Game Screen

Penalty Shoot Out: Cup Mania Free Play

Whether you’re new to this type of game or you’ve played similar installments from Evoplay before, we recommend that you test the free Penalty Shoot Out: Cup Mania demo game. It’s located at the top of this review page, and you can head up there and hit that play button to get started right away. However, we hope you also take the time to read our verdict of the game below, and leave a comment telling us what you think after the end of your Penalty Shoot Out: Cup Mania free play session.

Pros and Cons of Penalty Shoot Out: Cup Mania

Our Verdict

Evoplay has several penalty-themed instant games under its belt by now, and we like that each new installment brings something unique to the table. Penalty Shoot Out: Cup Mania looks fairly similar to the predecessors, though, which is to be expected in this genre. The timing of the release suggests that it aims to capture the build-up to the upcoming FIFA World Cup hosted by none other than the United States, Mexico, and Canada in the summer of 2026. However, we wouldn’t be surprised if they also release a dedicated World Cup installment closer to the event.

As a huge fan of football myself, I prefer these penalty shoot out games over most football-themed slot games. At least these games come closer to the real thing than spinning reels will get you, and it’s always nerve-rackingly fun to shoot some penalties. You can feel the tension as the ball is sitting there in front of you, and it only rises the higher you push that bet multiplier. One way to improve games like this visually would be to let the camera follow the ball after the shot. This way, you get a more dramatic climax as the ball hits the back of the net or the goalie's glove.

That being said, Penalty Shoot Out: Cup Mania has come a long way since the original Penalty Shoot Out, released in 2020. The simple 5-shot loop is long gone, replaced by an expanded and far more ambitious 15-step multiplier ladder. Reaching the 5th and final multiplier in the original game yielded only a moderate 30.72x your stake, while you can win up to 1,000x your stake in the base game of Penalty Shoot Out: Cup Mania. Of course, the odds of getting to the max win are significantly lower with 15 shots needed instead of just 5.

While the psychological battle against the goalkeeper is a genuine test of greed versus discipline in the base game, this dynamic shifts in the bonus round. With no need to cash out, you simply lean back and watch how far along the multiplier trail you can get. It’s only too bad that there is no organic way into this feature, not least since the bonus buy entry is unavailable in certain regions. With the increased bet multipliers and 3,000x max win, the bonus round soon became my main focus when testing Penalty Shoot Out: Cup Mania.