Over the years, I’ve played countless games throughout a wide variety of different genres. Yet there’s always been one genre I could never bring myself to enjoy: sports games. I never cared for the emphasis on realism and the often overly-simplistic nature of the gameplay you’d find in the EA Sports franchises, for instance. Granted, there are exceptions, such as those that lean more toward a cartoonish and over-the-top style, or those that use the emphasis on realism to do something unique and undeniably fun.
When I got the chance to play despelote, I wasn’t really sure which category it would fit into. Rather than emphasizing multiplayer, it is a uniquely single-player story that highlights the life of one of the game’s developers, Julián Cordero, as he grew up in Ecuador in the midst of them finally qualifying for the World Cup.
The premise is unique, for sure, but I wondered how the game would play. Would it be fun? Would the narrative be interesting, regardless of whether you’re interested in football/soccer or not? After a few hours, I found myself pleasantly surprised by despelote, despite some of its mechanical flaws.
A Fateful Moment In Ecuadorian History
despelote takes place in 2001, a year before the 2002 World Cup. This event matters as its the entire crux of the narrative, as it focuses on a boy by the name of Julián growing up in Ecuador as the country is on the cusp of winning five games in order to qualify for the event for the first time ever. Of course, much of the game focuses on the obsession of Julián, and the many characters scattered throughout his neighborhood in Quito, towards soccer (or football, as it’s known in most parts of the world, including Ecuador).
The narrative of despelote is fairly simple in the grand scheme of things. It focuses primarily on Julián as a child in 2001, running around school, making friends, and always with a football beneath his feet. He struggles to stay engaged with his family, as all he can think about is football, whether it’s playing it or watching it. This means some friction between him and his mother, as well as his sister.
That friction only continues in certain scenes where you get a glimpse of Julián in 2009, where he’s an older teenager with far more responsibilities and a greater desire to ignore all of them. The story cuts back and forth between these two eras of time, but mostly focuses on the 2001 era and the importance of the 2002 World Cup as a framing device. In between so-called chapters, a narrator provides insight into Ecuador’s progress in the qualifying matches.
A scoreboard appears, showing the number of points the country needs to qualify, as the narrator gives commentary on the general public’s reaction and excitement around the event. It’s really compelling, and helped to immerse me not just in Julián’s headspace, but also in the culture and era that despelote is working to convey. It also helps that all of the dialogue, whether it’s from the narrator, Julián, or any of the NPCs, is entirely in Spanish.
Part of the reason this device works so well is because its uplifted by a great presentation. The visuals use very striking colors, with each character being illustrated by a bright light, while the backgrounds are illuminated by various warm and cool tones. Additionally, the style is akin to the craft of using ben-day dots, like an old comic book, to create one singular image.
Occasionally, the game will use live-action footage or a more traditional 3D rendering, and these moments are a shocking contrast from the rest of the style. When they appear, it expertly conveys the significance of a moment in Julián’s life, whether its the moment Ecuador finally qualifies for the World Cup, or in which the narrator, Julián Cordero himself, reflects on the importance that a certain park in Quito had on his life. It adds to that feeling of immersion and creates this overall nostalgic feeling, regardless if you’ve never played a second of football in your life.
The presentation and narrative of despelote more than succeed in its goals. However, that brings us to the gameplay, which sadly isn’t as strong as the rest of the game.
A Foul
For most of despelote‘s gameplay, while the game isn’t very long, you will be doing the same things over and over again. Whether that’s running around a small neighborhood in Quito or kicking a ball around a park, this will usually be all you are doing for the entire 2-hour runtime. In theory, this may not be a bad thing. After all, it’s not as though the game has a huge asking price, and it creates a greater emphasis on the narrative and visuals.
Even in such a short runtime, though, the repetition of the gameplay quickly became frustrating. Admittedly, I was actually pretty surprised at the free range of motion that I had with controlling Julián. I was expecting a few moments of gameplay, briefly connected by the narrative. Instead, you could run around the neighborhood, interact with friends, and of course, play football. The novelty quickly wore off, however, as the linearity of each task became apparent.
Each chapter follows the same format: the narrator provides an overview of Ecuador’s qualifying match progress, which then transitions into a segment that follows Julián being allowed to run loose and play football, often in a very specific park. You interact with a few kids to either pass the ball to each other, try to hit a few bottles perched on a hedge, or find another object to use as a substitute ball.
Initially, these segments are charming. It’s fun seeing the interactions between these young kids, whose entire world revolves around this sport and nothing else. The aforementioned presentation only adds to that charm, especially in a segment where you run from a teacher and try to play football in the aforementioned park. But in the next segment, you meet with those kids and try to play football in the same park. In the next segment, you do the same thing, and this constantly repeats until the credits finally roll.
There are some changes to the pattern here and there, such as when you have to check your watch and make sure you arrive back at your house at a certain time, or towards the end, when you’re watching Julián’s sister and playing hide-and-seek with her. These moments are few and far between, though, and while those disruptions did come as a fun surprise, they were often undercut by the next segment, forcing you to do the same thing again.
It doesn’t help that the actual controls for kicking the ball around feel somewhat off. Rather than a specific button to kick the ball, you need to flick the stick in the direction you want the ball to go, as if you are controlling Julián’s legs. The result is a truly bizarre control scheme where you are trying to keep the ball in front of you and kicking it in the direction you need to go, all without knowing how high the ball is going to go and at what speed. There’s a moment where you need to kick a cone off the top of a trash bin, and I couldn’t quite figure out what the right way to knock it down was, due to how strange the controls were.
That said, what slightly undercuts these frustrations is how low-pressure everything feels. Even if you don’t click with the controls, even if you don’t enjoy the monotony of the gameplay, you can just run around, and eventually it will switch to the next story segment. That feeling applies to the aforementioned moments where the game slows down and doesn’t focus on kicking a ball around.
The best parts of the game are those that focus entirely on moments between Julián and his family. One of my favorite sections in the game is when Julián is taken to a party comprised mostly of adults, so he hides under the table with his sister as they both talk and play pretend. It then cuts to a moment in the future, where the two are doing the exact same thing again, in the middle of a party where everyone else is drinking.
It brought me back to a forgotten era of my own past: a time when all I wanted to do was hide away from all the adults and create my own space. It also helps that the game’s final half-hour works extremely well and serves as a great capstone to the experience. Despite despelote‘s problems, that is its greatest strength: its ability to transport you to a different era in time and reconnect you with your childhood, even if it vastly differs from Julián’s.
A Charming Look At The Past
I vividly remember, back when I was a kid, a time when my elementary school teachers literally stopped class to watch a match during the 2010 World Cup. While I don’t remember the exact match, I know that a good majority of the teachers and students were from the UK, while several students were from the US, so tensions were certainly high as we watched the match, and both teams were eventually eliminated from the competition. Playing despelote connected me to that memory, which is only a small part of how amazing the experience is.
It’s certainly a flawed game, with repetitive gameplay and strange controls, but the narrative and presentation more than make up for it. The premise of focusing on the life of one of the game’s developers through the lens of his love for football in the midst of Ecuador qualifying for the World Cup in 2001. Additionally, the unique visual style and segments that break the repetition by emphasizing small moments in both 2001 and 2009 add so much charm and personality to the entire experience.
If you never had an era in your life where football meant anything to you, then despelote may not be able to elicit the same reaction from you as it did for me. However, if you like short and sweet indie games and grew up watching the World Cup over the years, then I highly recommend giving this game your time. As for me, I am happy to have seen Julián Cordero’s story brought to life, and I am glad to have found a sports game that goes beyond the monotony of the genre to deliver a truly beautiful narrative journey.
Disclaimer: Panic Inc. provided a Nintendo Switch copy of despelote for review purposes.
