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, a...

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.

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 desc...

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.

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....

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 ...

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 W...