Rocket League

Rocket League's gameplay is largely the same as that of its predecessor, Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars. Players control a rocket-powered car and use it to hit a ball that is much larger than the cars towards the other team's goal area to score goals, in a way that resembles indoor soccer, with elements reminiscent of a demolition derby. Players' cars have the ability to hop to hit the ball while in mid-air. Updates in 2024 introduced new features that allow players to view the remaining boost amount of their teammates, and how much time was remaining on the game clock when specific comments were made in the chat.

Matches are usually five minutes long, with a sudden death overtime if the game is tied at that point. Matches can be played from between one-on-one up to four-on-four players, as well as in casual and ranked playlists. The latter serves as Rocket League's competitive online mode, where players compete in various tiered ranks within game seasons, with victories or losses raising or lowering a player's rank, respectively. The game includes a single-player Season mode, with the player competing with computer-controlled players.

Psyonix had previously developed Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars in 2008 for the PlayStation 3. That game itself bore out from previous modifications that Psyonix' founder, Dave Hagewood, had done for Unreal Tournament 2003 by expanding out vehicle-based gameplay that Epic Games had already set in place in the engine into a new game mode called Onslaught. For this, Hagewood was hired as a contractor by Epic for Unreal Tournament 2004 specifically for incorporating the Onslaught mode as an official part of the game. Hagewood used his experience at Epic to found Psyonix.

Among other contract projects, Psyonix worked to try to find a way to make racing the Unreal vehicles in a physics-based engine enjoyable. They had toyed with several options such as race modes or mazes, but found that when they added a ball to the arena to be pushed by the vehicles, they had hit upon the right formula, which would become Battle-Cars. Further to the success was the addition of the rocket-powered cars; this originally was to be a simple speed boost, but with the physics engine, they were able to have the vehicles fly off and around the arena, furthering the possibilities for gameplay.

Rocket League has received "generally favorable" reviews on all platforms, according to review aggregator website Metacritic. Positive feedback was aimed towards the game's multiplayer gameplay, and its graphics and visuals, especially in comparison to Battle-Cars; later reviews praised the player experience in the game. Criticism was mostly aimed at the game's physics engine, though a consensus on the topic has been mostly unclear, with some defending the engine.

In a review of Rocket League's beta preview, Ozzie Mejia of Shacknews praised Psyonix's approach to updating Battle-Cars using the PlayStation 4's hardware, describing the graphics as "brilliantly detailed" and "crisp", and citing its consistent frame rates throughout. Robert Summa of Destructoid shared Mejia's view that the game was "fun option for anyone looking to mix their racing and sports games together", himself describing that the game was "addictive and fun as hell." com shared positive views towards multiplayer gameplay in Rocket League. Ben Kuchera of Polygon wrote that the game "introduces a well-known concept and then adds a complication."