Despelote Nintendo Switch review – the memory of football

One of 2025’s best indie games arrives on Nintendo Switch for the first time, in what’s a very personal meditation on childhood, memory, and football.

Despite how transportative video games can be, few have ever strived to capture a moment in real-world history. Call Of Duty and Medal Of Honor used to pride themselves as being ‘realistic’ recreations of Second World War conflicts, but while Mafia and Assassin’s Creed are built around impressive historical set dressing, their stories only present broad strokes of reality.

Despelote (a Spanish term for pandemonium or raucous fun) is a slice of life adventure set in Quito, during Ecuador’s qualifying run for the 2002 World Cup. It’s a stylised, semi-autobiographical recollection of a specific moment in time, and one which captures a place, community, and – more universally – childhood perfectly. It’s a diary in video game form, albeit one which points a mirror at its own attempt to recapture the past.

At its core, this is a first person narrative experience from the view of an eight-year-old boy called Julián. Over the course of five days, centred around matches in Ecuador’s qualifying run, you explore vignettes of Julián’s life in his hometown, as the surging national pride sweeps through. You’ll kick a ball around with friends at school and soak in conversations as people crowd around TVs in shop windows, while trying to keep tabs on your younger, spirited sister.

None of this is particularly involving from a gameplay perspective, with interactions mostly limited to kicking or picking up objects, but despelote’s strengths are in the personal touches of its exuberant and realistic atmosphere. This is showcased in the opening, where you play a top down, black and white football sim on a games console, as the camera zooms out to reveal your living room, with the sound of your bickering parents gradually intruding on the action.

It’s one of many well observed sequences, sold by its naturalistic dialogue. The game’s voice cast is mostly made up of the developer’s Ecuadorian friends and family, who were encouraged to improvise their conversations – and the effect is absorbingly authentic. Conversations pile up and interrupt each other, often around mundane subjects, and never feel performative. Even the occasional moments of narration are delivered in the dry, matter-of-fact tone of a documentary.

Like any child who is obsessed with football, you can let these adult conversations wash over you, as you kick bottles off walls or intercept kickabouts between teenagers, because the dialogue is proximity-based and not reliant on button prompts. You’ll get more out of despelote by soaking up these ambient interactions, but the way they’re implemented serves a dual purpose in capturing the perspective of a child with only one care in the world.

Despite its historical focus, and reverence for the sport as a galvanising unifier, you don’t have to care about football to take something from despelote. Its distillation of childhood works on a broad scale, but it also functions as a fascinating window into an underrepresented culture, with the food, film, and music of Ecuador all spotlighted in its nostalgic reflections.

At a succinct two hours, the amount of ground – and surprises – despelote covers is more memorable than most games quadruple the size. It’s been a few months since our first play through, but the lasting impact is the elegance of its construction. The poetic transitions between certain scenes, the striking photography sketchbook visuals, and, in the penultimate sequence, the way it confronts its own honesty as a portrait of a formative time.

Other narrative driven titles with thin gameplay hooks are sometimes criticised for failing to justify their interactive elements, but this is an experience which probably wouldn’t work – or at least resonate so strongly – if it wasn’t a video game. The medium is baked into the story, but beyond that, the feeling of being transported back to a child’s perspective is more vividly realised than anything you can simply watch or read.

It’s not clear why the game has taken so long to appear on Switch, given it released on every other format last May, but no doubt it’s because the whole thing was made by basically just two people. It’s well suited to the Switch though, as most indie games tend to be, and is low tech enough that there’s not a sniff of performance issues.

We’ve been leaning on the gush pedal, but despelote is so low-key it’s easy to oversell the whole thing. It’s gentle, smartly designed, and a great example of what games can do beyond addictive loops or escapist thrills. But it’s also an understated affair which doesn’t have any air of self-importance. And yet, at the same time, it’s more interesting and layered than its simplicity suggests.

If it sounds like we’re dancing around spoilers, it’s because despelote is best enjoyed without any prior knowledge or expectations of what you’re getting into. If you’re even mildly curious about the setting, or have an affinity for games which operate at a thoughtful, contemplative speed, this is a brilliant, heartfelt and informative musing on the power of sport – and how its glories can ripple through communities and generations.

Formats: Nintendo Switch (reviewed), PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £11.99
Publisher: Panic
Developer: Julián Cordero and Sebastian Valbuena
Release Date: 13th January 2026
Age Rating: 16

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