Despelote tells a compelling autobiographical story of youth, family, and the World Cup
It’s rare that a game with so much style and so much substance, with a different language and in a different country and focused on soccer can be so easy to connect with. But that’s because it’s not actually about the sport, but rather about coming of age and understanding our place and how we make it.
Set during Ecuador’s 2001 qualifications, Despelote tells the tale of 8 year old Julian as the national team’s wins beging to mount and it makes a serious charge to its first ever World Cup. The entire country is rooting for this team, with the ferver seeping into every aspect of the daily lives of its citizens. As a child we’re initially immune but slowly getting caught up into it as well. We’re playing soccer with a ball, we’re playing video game soccer, and we’re thinking about soccer when we’re not doing either of those things, all while having to grow up.
Growing up can be tough; not only do we have to worry about ourselves, but we have the pressures of school and family to balance. We follow our parents’ instructions to watch our sister or to wait on a park bench, but kids want to play until a specific time, but kids want to play. We want to play. And so we wander off, tempted by our friends playing in a field or a balloon bouncing at a wedding, or a few beers at a party in a field.
Set in first person view, we can walk around our environment and talk to people, wave at them, or kick a ball at a stack of bottle (it’s surprisingly fun in this vantage point). We can even play an in-game soccer game that mimics the soccer games of the 90s. This part of the experience can sort of be described as a series of open, scoreless mini games that take place in set pieces and important moments of a child’s life. We don’t have to win anything, and we can do things in whatever order or to whatever extent we want to, so long as we’re staying a part of the conversations around us.
The game has a wild black and white/monochrome aesthetic that looks more like a Game Boy camera at times or a kid’s sketches on color construction paper than anything I’ve seen before.
That’s what makes Despelote so great; soccer is a sort of metaphor for life. We have goals we need to accomplish, whether personal or put upon us, and we can succeed or fail. These goals not only affect us but they affect those around us. When Ecuador’s story is finally complete, so is ours. In just two hours we’ve grown, we’ve talked, we’ve perhaps accepted who we are becoming. But we also hold those moments, success and failure and everything in between, in our hearts forever.
This review is based on a Steam code provided to SideQuesting by the Publisher. This video originally appeared in The SideQuest LIVE! for December 17, 2025.
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