REVIEW: Despelote's part-game part-documentary speaks to the power of sports in community and simpler times

Nate Hermanson
May 5
7 min read

It's September 28, 2005. My family's garage, in the process of slowly being converted into a room, is basically toxic with the fumes of paint and spackle we've applied to the walls and ceiling. The San Diego Padres are destroying the San Francisco Giants 9–1. It's a game I wouldn't normally be locked into at 12 years old, but today's special. If the Padres get this final out, they'll clinch first place in the division and a playoff berth for the first time in my conscious and baseball-attentive life.

I'm standing in the living room, tense — because I've seen this team be mediocre for years (and frankly, '05 wasn't much different) and even an eight-run lead doesn't feel comfortable. My dad and my uncle, with the latent fumes of the garage still clinging to their clothes, lean forward in their seats behind me as we wait for Trevor Hoffman to throw the final pitch.

He does. It's hit into the air. Rookie right fielder Ben Johnson waits under the ball, and we're already yelling. When he makes the catch, we fall into a hug and start jumping— so do the Padres players on the bench, before mobbing the field. As they celebrate, I know this broadcast won't tell me nearly as much as the internet can, so I find myself running into our half-finished garage, pushing past the plastic hanging in the doorway, to check my computer and see what people are saying online. My eyes are wet and I can't tell if it's because of the pungent air or the pride I feel rising in my chest for the team reaching a pinnacle I'd never witnessed in my lifetime. I never forget this day.

And the magnitude of that feeling — that's what Despelote is about. In part.

An in-game shot of Despelote. In a photorealistic depiction of an open field in Quito (with a strong noise filter, a green tint, and high contrast), several people drawn in a simple, black and white, cartoony line art style, kick around a soccer ball. To the left of the player character who has a first-person point of view, a person says, "We've never qualified. But we never lose faith, you know?"

Just the Facts

Developer: Julián Cordero and Sebastian Valbuena

Publisher: Panic

Platform(s): PC*, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series S and X, Nintendo Switch *denotes platform reviewed on

Price: $14.99

Release Date: May 1, 2025

Review key provided by publisher via popagenda.

Football is life

Despelote is many things. It's an interactive documentary of a nation's rise to prominence on the national stage in the early 2000s. It's a testimony to the power of sports in bringing a community together. It's a dream about simpler times, when keeping the ball at your feet moving was the biggest worry you had. It's a memoir from its creators, Julián Cordero and Sebastian Valbuena, about Ecuador as they remember it.

This first-person narrative exploration game is a unique slice-of-life storytelling project that is lightly autobiographical, starring Cordero, his family, and Ecuador as he likes to remember it during a time when soccer took hold of the population thanks to the national team's bid for the 2002 World Cup.

You roam the neighborhood of his youth, tracking the team's path to qualifying for the first time in their history, as Julián struggles to keep his attention on anything other than soccer. A teacher's lessons drone out of his mind as he watches local kids kick the ball around in the park outside. Family parties are disrupted, because all anyone wants to do is watch the latest qualifying match. You play through snippets of his semi-fictionalized life over a five-month stretch, with each chapter marked by the day of each of Ecuador's World Cup qualifying matches.

Despelote's story is depicted as naturally as possible. Cordero even got his own parents to sit down and record voiceover for the game, as well as other friends and family — letting them improvise dialogue with some basic frameworks, leading to a fictionalized Quito full of genuine conversations. These people aren't acting. They're just talking. People trail off. They stumble over themselves. They aren't characters, just people. They also showcase everything in Spanish, with text bubbles that do the translating for you if you don't speak it.

As Julián, you'll drift through these constant conversations happening all throughout the park near your home as your childish brain scrambles for another ball to kick, another friend to make, another bit of mischief to get into. It might not matter to you, but as all kids do, you take it all in and feel the hopes and anxieties of this nation seep into you.

And while this grounded approach to storytelling — to accurately representing a town and its people — is incredibly special, it's in the more surreal moments where Despelote truly thrives. When you're dribbling a ball endlessly in a dream and able to kick it into the stratosphere. When you wander through a party of strangers, suddenly grown and drinking beers you find, but wanting to revert to your childhood by ducking under the table to hide from your anxieties. There are some incredible surprises hidden in this sub-two-hour experience that really speak to the dreamy mind-wandering of childhood and the remnants of a meandering mind that stick with you as you grow older.

An in-game screenshot of Despelote. From the first-person perspective, a child stands being scolded by his mother. She stands just ahead of him with her hands at her sides and says: "Julian! What's going on! Always so misbehaved, what am I going to do with you? Let's go home!" A man playing guitar sits watching this scene. They are in a park landscape tinged in a dark purple-red tone and the people are all displayed with black and white line art.

Nostalgia for a simpler time

Part of that dream-like quality comes in how Cordero and Valbuena bring their version of Quito to life. Despelote's stunning visual style is eye-catching at a glance, but no photo or trailer truly did it justice in motion. The contrast between the 3D-scanned uncannily photorealistic environments — pushed through a grainy dithered dot filter — and the simple black and white line art that spotlights all of the people you meet and the items you can interact with, makes for a constantly engaging visual style.

Knowing this game's pieced together by actual memories of this specific place and time, the fuzziness of the environments remind me of the dream-like liminal spaces we create in our sleep that are cobbled together with pieces from five different places we've been in our life. And the bright line art that stands out against it shows what the developers found most important at the time: the people, childhood toys, and of course, the footballs.

When Despelote's more surreal moments pop up, they are only amplified by the game's bold artistic choices. It leaves you in that same melancholic, nostalgic headspace that I imagine led the team to recreate and reexplore this time and place. It's a testament to the power of representation and how, when a hyper-personal story is done as well as it is here, it can pull in people from all walks and let them experience life through a different lens.

I was fascinated by the experience of playing this game, and am nearly just as fascinated with what it must have been like to make it. I'd easily watch a full-on documentary about how they recorded these conversations, how they scanned this town in and treated it to look as good as it does here. There's a moment near the end where Julián pulls back the curtain to address the player directly and talk about some of the work that was needed to make Despelote and the process, and I was ready to sit there for hours listening to more of it.

An in-game screenshot of Despelote. From the first-person perspective, a child kicks a ball toward another kid who waits as a goalie. She stands in between the arches of an art piece that works as the goal posts. A conversation is happening behind them somewhere depicted by bubbles. "Rumor has it? There's a rumor about this girl?" "Rumor has it... Yes, yes, yes. It's gonna be hard."

A sports game in name only

Despelote is interesting, because it's less something you play and more something that happens to you — something for you to experience. Most of the game's action is about wandering through these small sandboxes offered to you, soaking in the city and its people, as you live through this incredibly hopeful moment in time. There are no real goals (except, you know... the football kind), and if you simply sit in place the story will progress without you. Some people will find that boring, and I definitely felt the lurch at times, but was mostly enamored with its beautiful plainness.

The most interesting aspect of Despelote's gameplay comes in Julián's football-based interactions: dribbling a ball around as you wander the park, finding ball replacements when the older kids bully you and take yours away, or passing the ball around with your friends as you talk about school and the national team.

Whenever Julián's got a ball (or a bottle, or a DVD case, or literally anything else kickable), you've got a kind of magnetic tether to the ball, and as long as you keep it in front of you, it'll stick with you. With a ball, you can at any point flick the right stick to kick it around to knock bottles over or shoot a goal against your friends. It's an intuitive control scheme that feels like it'd work for an actual football game in a way I'd be obsessed with. There's a console game that Julián plays throughout the story that emulates Ecuador's qualifying matches that I wish I could just get full access to, because it just feels so good to kick the ball around.

But, inevitably, Julián's parents will come over to interrupt the fun, turning the TV off to get him to eat dinner and such.

My only real fuss about Despelote is that so much of this world is stopped with interruptions. I wish I could just sit in its various chapters for hours, listening in on every conversation possible, or watching as much of Ecuador's qualifying matches — which seem to play out in real time on nearby TVs — as they'll let me. To kick my ball at everything in sight. But the story's got a movie-like pace to keep, and some deadline always pulls you away from the fun before you've even experienced all that's on offer. I'm sure there's a lesson about childhood impatience and being okay with not experiencing everything you possibly can, but I just want to soak in the vibes of Julián and Sebastian's recreation of Quito.

But I demand free play with Tino Tini's Soccer 99 with a post-launch update, because I'm obsessed.

An in-game screenshot of Despelote. From the first-person perspective, a child kicks a deflated soccer ball while a group of children look on. A man berates his dog who stands on a leash held by him to his right. He says: "Damn, Bobby! Didn't I teach you not to? Forgive my little dog, kids." A park landscape tinged in a dark pinkish reddish tone can be seen in the background.

Despelote is a fascinating experience. It plays like an interactive documentary, and it feels like a true depiction of a place and time I've never experienced but feel like I can somewhat understand now.

As I look back on that day in my acrid garage, or as I remember two years later when I sat in a dark room crying because the Padres lost their playoffs spot on the last possible day, I'll also remember this game. I'll remember me in 2025 crying at 2 a.m. with a controller in my hand alongside the people of Ecuador who were no doubt crying as their team went for glory in 2001.

Because that's what sports (and video games) are all about.

Video Games Are Good and Despelote is . . . GREAT. (9/10)

+ an incredibly unique part-autobiographical documentary part-game experience, a fascinating art style that thrives in its contrasts, naturalistic depiction of a place and time

- simultaneously slow and rushed, no free play tino tini's soccer :(, not really something you "play"

The key art for the game Despelote. A photograph of a city is tinged with a dark pink tone while black and white line art of kids playing soccer on the street is overlaid. There is a black and white flag of Ecuador, a group of people sitting around a TV in plastic chairs, and various other people milling about.

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