Rocket League is the sequel to Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars. It is a vehicle based, futuristic variant of football (soccer). Just like the original game it is played in a large arena with two teams of cars. As with football the goal is to score by launching a giant ball into the goal of the opposing team. The arena has curved edges with large walls, so the ball cannot leave the pitch and bounces back, and it is possible to drive up the sides.

Cars have no means of attack and no health bar, but it is possible to ram other cars to hinder them. Vehicles also have the ability to jump and use nitro. Nitro boosts are limited, but can be refilled by driving over certain sections of the pitch. By winning matches experience is earned to level up and unlock new parts. The car can be fully customized in a garage with different types of bodies, colours, wheels, decals, nitro trails etc. which is new for this version. Next to one-time exhibition matches and online games, it has a full season mode. The player sets up a season and determines the length (number of weeks), difficulty (rookie, pro, all-star), play-offs and the team size, with multiple matches in succession. Matches generally last five minutes.

The game supports both offline (split-screen for up to four players) and online multiplayer. Matches can be played with two to up to eight players and online games support both ranked and unranked playlists. Multiplayer is platform independent. When playing alone team mates are controlled by the AI. The tutorial consists of several mini-games based on three categories: defense, offence, and aerial play. While playing a small arrow shows the location of the ball when it is in the air and the camera can be rotated around the car to keep track of the action. After scoring the ball is returned to the middle and the cars are flown back to their side of the pitch.