I have a confession to make right off the bat: I’ve never really liked football. I realise that’s sacrilege, especially given that I grew up in the sport’s birthplace, at least where its modern incarnation was formed. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve tried my hand at it many a time. I’m not sure it’s even possible to grow up in England and not interact with football in some capacity at some point. It just never clicked for me. Still, I’ve always respected what it means to so many people across the world. Nowhere is that respect more clear than in Julián Cordero and Sebastian Valbuena’s Despelote.
The year is 2001, and Ecuador is closer than it’s ever been to qualifying for the 2002 FIFA World Cup in Korea and Japan. The mood is electric, with the people of Ecuador’s spirits at an all-time high.
You play as an eight-year-old Julián as he navigates his daily life in the capital city of Quito in the run-up to the World Cup qualifiers. He eats, sleeps, breathes, and consumes football in every part of his life, which you soon find to be true as it’s pretty much the only way of interacting with the world throughout Despelote. Sure, you can pick things up, but 99% of what you’ll be doing in this game is kicking anything and everything at foot level.
To be clear, Despelote places the narrative experience at the forefront, with the gameplay mainly serving as flavour to drive its central themes home. I don’t mean this to be dismissive in any way, but it’s important to go into Despelote with the right expectations. You could, for all intents and purposes, classify it as a walking simulator (or “kicking simulator,” more like), though that label has been widely stigmatized over the years.
Despite being about entirely different topics, Despelote reminded me a lot of the Brazilian film Cidade de Deus (City of God), one of my favorites. Not just because of its South American setting, but because it shows the life of one young character through a series of vignettes, all connected by a central theme (football in this case) and how it shapes their future.
Julián Cordero is the main character of Despelote and narrates the experience, offering a very frank and sometimes blunt perspective on the events of his childhood, which Despelote depicts in a semi-autobiographical fashion. This method also spotlights the process of designing the game and the pursuit of conveying just how much football means to him personally, and what it meant to Ecuadorians in 2001.
What drew me to Despelote in the first place was twofold. First, it’s published by Panic, who published Firewatch, Untitled Goose Game, and the hilarious Thank Goodness You’re Here, along with creating the fantastic Playdate handheld gaming system. Secondly, and most crucially, is probably what’s drawing many of you to Despelote as you read this: its striking art style.
Despelote‘s visual style encompasses a fascinating, gorgeous combination of 3D environments, captured in stunning detail and rendered in a sepia-toned dot matrix look to invoke “a dreamy, impressionistic style” meant to represent feelings of nostalgia. Perhaps the most surprising thing about Despelote‘s look is that all the environments are rendered from 3D photographs of the real locations. You can tell, too, since, despite the haziness, each location is impressively detailed.
There’s even a moment where Cordero treats the player to a peek behind the curtain, showcasing what’s underneath the environments. It’s a treat to see, and I’m always fond of devs letting the players witness how the proverbial sausage gets made.
Nearly every character in the game is depicted as a flat, 2D sketch with only minor articulation and animation. This may initially seem jarring, but given that the game’s narrative is centered around nostalgia, taking place from a child’s perspective, it’s very fitting. Who and what gets prioritised when being depicted also drives home exactly what matters to a young Julián — his family, his friends, and football.
As for criticisms of Despelote, the kicking controls can be very cumbersome and finicky, with no settings to affect them. When interacting with a ball or kickable object, your camera is locked in place, and the right stick becomes your foot control. You can still move the camera left and right, but your up and down do the kicking. There are times when you have to be quite precise with your kicks, and lining up your shot is easier said than done, especially when you’re wrangling the camera and making sure you don’t accidentally kick whatever’s in front of you, which happens much more often than not, unfortunately.
Despelote‘s length is also going to be a sticking point for a lot of people. While I’m fine with shorter games, price is often a crucial factor in that equation. If you get everything out of every scene in the game that you possibly can, Despelote will run you two hours in total at maximum. There is some replay value, namely in the interactables/kickables in the environment and the cute little soccer minigame that Julián is playing at the start of Despelote, but otherwise, you should treat this as the narrative-focused experience that it is, more than anything else.
Despelote is wonderful, both as interactive art and as a window into a people and culture I was previously unfamiliar with. You certainly don’t have to be a fan of football, or sports at all, to get something out of Despelote. But if you are, no doubt it captures many of the same feelings and emotions you’ve felt as a football fan, in your youth and now.
One great detail about Despelote that’s no less understated is its voice acting. While it’s entirely in Spanish, you can tell that the conversations and, particularly, the performances from every character are convincing and realistic even if you don’t know the language. Cordero has previously stated that many of Despelote‘s performances are by the people in his life, including his parents, who, of course, play a key role in the story. I don’t speak Spanish, so I can’t say whether the performances are good overall, but it hardly matters, given that they’re real, which only adds to the experience.
Despelote‘s short length will put some people off and the finicky controls could use some fine-tuning and extra settings to adjust. But if you’re even a little intrigued by trailers, the demo, or indeed this review, you’ll find a truly charming and sincere little odyssey with a sweet story to tell and a unique, engaging way of telling it.
