Knockout Bash brings Battle Royale to Rocket League

There is currently a limited time event happening in Rocket League right now called Knockout Bash, and it turns the cars-meets-soccer game into cars-meets-battle royale. It seems a little weird to imagine Rocket League mixed with a Battle Royale, but the concept of the Knockout game mode is actually pretty interesting.

How to play the Knockout Battle Royale game mode

Rocket League is normally most of the time a team game. However, in Knockout, there are no teams. There are a total of eight players in a free-for-all. The objective of the game is to knock all other opponents off of the platform.

You will have to be strategic about how you plan your attacks because each player only has three lives. When your lives are gone, you are eliminated from the competition. If you are knocked out of the safe zone, you will only have 10 seconds to make your way back into the safe zone otherwise you will lose a life.

As the game progresses, the safe zone will begin to shrink, just like you would see in any other Battle Royale genre video game. If the match is still going on after six minutes, the match will officially enter Sudden KO. At this point, any Attack or Throw will occur at maximum power and being knocked out of the Safe Zone causes an instant KO. It is a strategy Psyonix is using to speed up Knockout games that tend to go on for too long. Be the last car standing and you will be declared victorious.

How do you knock players out of the Safe Zone?

In the Knockout game mode, there are three core gameplay mechanics. You can either Attack, Block, or Grab. Attacking is just driving into your opponents to send them flying off the map. Just as you can imagine, the faster your car is going, the faster and farther your opponents will fly off the map.

If you notice an opponent coming speeding towards you, you are able to initiate a Block to try and block your opponent’s Attack. You will have to time this perfectly otherwise your Block will fail, and you will be vulnerable to any oncoming Attacks.

There is also a way you can grab your opponents with your car and try to throw off of the map. This is something that will come in handy a lot and get you some nice eliminations if you catch your opponents off guard.

If you were wondering how this game mode would work with the current arenas that are featured in Rocket League, it wouldn’t. Psyonix has created three new arenas called Calavera, Carbon, and Quadron. These arenas have no walls and were built strictly for this Knockout game mode.

If this Battle Royale style game mode sounds like something that you would be interesting in playing, you can play it right now. The Knockout Bash event started on April 27 and will run until May 10. There is plenty of time to try this unique twist Psyonix has put on Rocket League. It definitely wasn’t something that a lot of people were ever expecting to see in Rocket League, but given how popular Battle Royale video games have become over the last few years, it makes a lot of sense that Rocket League has officially joined the party.