despelote Review (Switch eShop)

Editor's note: This game launched in North America on 11th December, but won't hit European eShops until 13th January.

For some, football is something to play; for some, it’s something to watch; for others, it’s something to be scared of in the playground. But in 2001, in Ecuador, football meant just about everything to just about everyone. At least, that’s the story told by Despelote, a game that conjures the magic of childhood and football fever and makes it captivatingly relatable.

The game opens with you playing video soccer on an old console. As it’s gradually revealed that you’re sitting in a family living room, your parents’ chatter creeping into your awareness, you are connected very intimately with the protagonist of the game — its designer — Julián, a kid in Ecuador in 2001.

That year, Ecuador clinched a game against Peru, starting a journey towards first-time World Cup qualification, and everyone’s there for it. Your family are watching football, school kids are playing football at break time, overheard grown-up conversations are about football, and it’s blaring on TVs in bars and shop windows. The sense of optimism brewing around this national event permeates every aspect of life and it’s impossible not to be swept up in it.

This historic moment fixes the story in place and time, creating a little bubble of childhood. The nostalgia is flavoured with small adventures, like skipping school to take in the glorious scenery of Ecuador, aggravating your teacher, and playing out too long in the rain.

Gameplay-wise, this is all delivered in a variety of ways. That opening moment of playing on the console gives you a top-down, black-and-white football game, controlled with an innovative two-stick arrangement. The game then moves into first person, your “real-world” playtime football-kicking coming to mirror the console game’s controls. From this perspective, you sit in class, check your watch, skip school, talk to your friends, and, yes, kick around a football.

Much of the time, you're just an observer, building the sense of being a kid and following whatever is set out for you by the adults in your life. You listen to lessons while you wait for the bell; you ride in the back seat and hear conversations happening in the front. Among the passive moments are a variety of first-person interactions, almost always involving or adjacent to football.

Despelote doesn’t try to riff on a central mechanic. In place of that, it develops themes of memory and childhood through a range of gameplay approaches. This keeps the experience light while making the excitement about the football feel totally irresistible. However you look at it, however you interact with it, everything is football. From Julián Cordero’s perspective, everything orbits around football, but other key moments in Ecuador’s history play out, too, from dollarisation to the country’s first showing at the Venice Film Festival.

This gameplay-light approach does mean Despelote asks for a certain mindset. This isn’t a game driven by challenge, mastery, or meaningful choice, and there are long stretches where your role is simply to exist in the moment it presents. Progress is gentle, more like turning a page of a book than developing gameplay, and the designer is happier letting scenes wash over you than pushing you forward. If you’re willing to meet it on those terms, the restraint feels purposeful; if not, this gentle vignette may feel too far from a traditional game.

Visually, the game could hardly be more distinctive. The art, by Sebastián Valbuena, sees figures drawn by hand in black outlines on white backgrounds making up the cast of the game. They sit on top of hazily dithered two-tone scenes. This effect layered on top of the 3D environment completely disguises the level of detail in the world, its lighting and textures – almost anything that might normally contribute to overall visual impressions.

The graphics are therefore, in a sense, flawless. The art direction is expressed to its full, love it or hate it. In motion, it comes to life in a way screenshots can’t convey, and once you're immersed, the world is living and breathing. This is helped by the voicing of all dialogue and the inclusion of real video of football matches, displayed through the same vibrant filter.

All the spoken language is Spanish, with English speech bubbles written out onscreen. This adds beautifully to the sense of place and authenticity; I was transported to Ecuador and my imagination ran with it. Meanwhile, active sound effects and incidental sounds lift the realism of the world. Music is relatively sparse and often diegetic, with key moments of wistful guitar – but this contributes to a matter-of-fact tone that doesn’t overegg the emotional heart of the story. And an emotional response is what the game is all about. Yes, football provides a pitch for it to play on, but this is a relatable story even to someone with no interest in the sport.

A slightly dry tone also makes room for some light humour. With Despelote, Cordero doesn’t take himself too seriously. A lack of self-importance places the protagonist as just one thread in the tapestry, which again builds a sense of a moment in history. A remembered story is always one you can’t alter, so drifting through this autobiographical account makes total sense. That said, if you’re looking for greater agency or action, maybe this won’t quite be for you.

It’s to Cordero’s credit that they also knew when to stop. The game tells its story without padding, then ties it in a bow and bids farewell after just a couple of hours. It lands as a complete work and can’t be criticised for being short – but bear in mind that this is not some open-ended adventure.