Despelote

Despelote's creators tell a remarkable, pseudo-autobiographical tale about football, Ecuador, and community - but also one about the act of remembering, and the creative act itself.

If I pull up a Google Maps street view of my old house in the Dominican Republic, I’m met by a stranger. I don’t mean the literal stranger eyeing the camera from the garage, but the place itself. The exterior’s been repainted. The little garden out front has been ripped out. The parking spaces, which were once just aisles of concrete between dirt patches and tufts of grass, have been paved over, and the pathway to the door is no longer. The stoop on which I’d wait for my friends and count ants is gone. Through the barred windows, I see the now vacant sun room where I once spent a summer playin...

Despelote was a bit of a personal one for me, and I can see why some players may not love it due to it being a walking simulator where you kick a ball around. But for anyone willing to give it a chance, you’ll find a snippet of pure sentiment to engage with as you put on the shoes of its developer. You see Ecuador for its authentic self as a child and witness a moment that you probably never batted an eye at before. But you leave with a fuzzy feeling, wanting to reminisce about your own mem...

Maybe I'm so enamoured by Despolete because football has been a constant companion in my own life. My childhood memories are inextricable from hundreds of hours spent playing Sensible Soccer, or from kickabouts at the park in which my friends and I provided our own colour commentary and adopted the roles of regens from our Championship Mananger campaigns. When I dreamed, I too dreamed of football. I think if you've never had that kind of relationship with the sport, Despelote might help expla...

A beautiful portrait of a 2001 neighborhood in Quito, Ecuador, taking advantage of the deep personal connections the gaming medium is best for, despelote seamlessly imprints itself on the player's mind.

Mechanically speaking, Despelote is a football (or soccer, if you’re from the US) game. It’s not trying to compete with EA Sports’ or Konami’s offerings, nor emulate arcade classics like many other indies. It merely uses its gameplay hook of kicking a ball towards a single goal (pun intended): delivering a deeply emotional and inspirational storyline set in Ecuador. Intrigued? So were we. Here’s our review of Despelote on Xbox Series X!

Despelote is a short narrative adventure told through the eyes of an eight-year-old boy, as he navigates everyday life while the nation around him comes to grips with seeing a major sports dream become reality for the first time in Ecuador’s history. This autobiographical tale gives players the freedom to shape Julian’s memories of this momentous period, encouraging exploration through the simple joy of kicking a ball. While the story may not resonate with everyone, the way you experience those two hours is special in its own right.

In the 2012 book ‘Rise of the Videogame Zinesters’, game designer Anna Anthropy advocates for games as “personal artifacts instead of impersonal creations by teams” – games not as huge commercial entities but private, unique stories that have more in common with zines (small self-publications) than blockbusters. I open the review with this quote because not only does Despelote neatly fit this description, but it’s also central to the game’s success.

Being someone from Brazil, I almost take for granted the fact my country always qualifies for a World Cup every four years. For us, not winning it is a disaster. For other nations, just the fact your nation is there is something that makes the entire competition memorable and a source of national pride. I noticed that when I visited Panama in 2018, when the country first played an edition of the World Cup. And this is also the basis behind Despelote, an autobiographical slice-of-life adventur...

All of those memories were at different scales and all with different levels of attachment. Yet playing through despelote, it appreciates all those moments in football and ascribes importance to all of it. Between its chaotic park gameplay, its heartfelt reminiscence of an Ecuador united through its national team’s brazen and brilliant ambitions, this is a football game that truly understands football way more than most games featuring football and why it matters. Because sometimes, for 90 ...

For so many supporters around the world, football is more than just a sport about kicking a ball into the back of the net. A cultural touchstone, a way to bond and form friendships, a reason to travel — it’s a way of life.