Despelote Review

Eight-year-old Julián lives with his parents and younger sister in the town of Quito, Ecuador. It’s the early 2000s and the national soccer team are on their way to qualifying for the World Cup. The community is buzzing with hope, and you are Julián, feeling and hearing it all, trying to find a ball to kick while quietly locking away all these precious memories.

Despelote is a slice-of-life documentation of nostalgia. It stitches together elements that I typically enjoy; the game and culture of soccer, a biographical depiction of a real-life locale through thoroughly artistic sound and visual design, and most brutally, the ability to elicit heart-wrenching emotions.

We are introduced to the video game through another, Tino Tini’s Soccer, which Julián will play at various times throughout the experience. In this minimal top-down game is where you first learn the run and kick, and this directly transfers to how Julián does so in the physical world of Quito. Controlling the soccer ball feels janky and joyful, and reflects honestly the clumsiness of an excited and not-yet-skilful eight-year-old. Your controls are minimal and include waving hola, grabbing objects, and occasionally drawing.

The only game that matters

Much of the gameplay is set in Julián’s family home and the surrounding neighbourhood, with La Carolina Park as the central hub of activity. The visuals are absorbing. Dreamy monochromatic environments punctuated by cartoonish objects and characters. Despite this, it never strays too far into the surreal because of its authentic anchoring in the everyday. The soundscapes are built from on-site field recordings of grass rustling, kids yelling, the particular springy thump of soccer balls, and unscripted natural conversations in Spanish which are quintessentially Latin in style.

In the immediate, you are Julián simply wanting to get near a soccer ball, but you are often distracted by the deeply felt place-ballet, the typical routine of sounds, movements, and sights that make way for opportunities to listen to snippets of conversation between a resident and the cevichocho man, to pat dogs, chase pigeons, turn off loud boom boxes.

From the beginning, you are shown the list of chapters, structured around the dates of the big soccer matches, and with each match crossed out you become aware of how quickly time passes and how close you are to the end. Wherever Julián is there is a choice to watch real footage of the match, at home, through a shop window. But there’s also the opportunity to kick something around (ball or otherwise) or stop to listen to conversations.

The conversations, which happen constantly and often overlap with each other, are the driving force in creating a sense of place. They range from childish taunting to beautiful mundanity to hints at the larger concerns of Quito, including the then overwhelming focus on the World Cup and civil unrest in response to the financial crisis. Lines are often loaded with humour, delivered with tenderness, with characters stumbling over words and interrupting each other. Sticking around to listen gives you a sense of at-easeness.

Despelote’s social connections are varied and important

While I thought of arguing that the short two-ish hours of playtime is the only drawback of the game, I eventually conceded that it imbues the experience even more so with the heaviest emotional element of it; time passing.

Although the gameplay is slow-paced, there’s still not enough time to do everything, take it all in, archive it in your mind. Sometimes your mama asks you to be home at a certain time, the closest the game comes to setting a goal. Sometimes scenes will suddenly and dramatically blur away into the next. The game urges you to choose the more playful, cheeky option, to stay out and kick balls into glass bottles and play hide-and-seek with your sister. Even without goals you naturally develop the desire to play with your time as much as possible. The childlike whimsy, to play, to be naughty, forms part of the bittersweet tone of the experience. Adults might yell, maybe you stay at school later, but the worst part of these consequences for Julián is that it takes time away from playing. The way Julián pushed against these boundaries made me wish I had done more of the same.

The presence of clocks is recurring, as is the ability for Julián to look down at his wristwatch. The narrative jumps back and forth between child and teenage Julián. One moment you and your sister hide under a table, you get scolded for picking up a glass of wine. The next, you are drinking abandoned beers and are again under a table to escape awkward conversations at a house party. You watch Julian grow, change his priorities, ignore the soccer ball.

The game becomes self-reflexive, first subtly through the narration, and then all at once. I appreciated that these parts were not heavy-handed in their delivery but, much like the rest of the game, doled out minimally. Thankfully it doesn’t do any wanky over-intellectualising that many games with similarly artful premises often rely on. The creators are obviously well aware of the effects of nostalgia, and I commend them for undergoing such emotionally taxing work. Since it’s not only the feeling of ‘homesickness’ for a place but, because of that strange alchemy of memory, time, and emotion, that this place no longer exists, nor did it ever the way we imagine.

Julián’s different stages of life are felt throughout Despelote

You are Julián, once again, playing his soccer video game. You win or you lose, but instead of leaving you stay in the game, following your pixelated teammates off the field. You keep walking until you are in Quito, running around as your avatar’s avatar through your park, exploring your backstreets, your staircases you have come to know so well. Play is not kept in a distinct realm but bleeds into Julián’s everyday.

Final Thoughts

Despelote is yet another juicy example of the ability of hyper specific stories to unlock universally human feelings, rather than the often misguided attempts to generalise settings and identities to reach more people. I want more games like this, and thankfully smart companies like Panic keep publishing them.

Whether you grew up in Quito during the World Cup qualifiers or not, Julián’s nostalgia becomes your own. Because what was so formative about that time for him? The games? The cevichocho? The conversations with his little sister? It was probably all of it, imperfectly melding together and crystalising into a particular longing that we have all felt. This version of Quito can never be returned to, but at least here the feeling of it has been so carefully nurtured.

Reviewed on Steam Deck // Review code supplied by the publisher

Click here for more information on WellPlayed’s review policy and ethics