A frustrating thing I frequently find myself thinking about games is that they very rarely try to be more than what they are, at least when it comes to AAA ones (or any kind of game that has enough money for a full blown ad campaign). They’re just so often… games. No interest or desire to expand the medium. Luckily, there are people doing the work to rethink what games are, and today we now have Despelote, a “semi-autobiographical”, almost documentary-like game about playing football in Ecuador in 2001.
The game follows an eight year old Julián Cordero, one of the lead developers on the game, as he kicks about a football throughout Quito, the capital of Ecuador. Now, I’ll be honest, I care about football about as far as I can throw one (it’s not very far). That doesn’t matter very much to me though because, from the looks of it, Despelote shows a connection to the beautiful game that anyone could get invested in.
Kicking around the football is all physics based too, it looks so satisfying just punting it off into the distance. The look of the game is impressive too. It has this filter to it that makes everything look like it’s a photo that’s been put through one of those free filters that comes with some camera app. I don’t mean this derogatorily in any way, there’s such a strong sense of texture to it that somehow makes it feel real and surreal at the same time. Exactly my kind of vibe.
All of the photos and audio in the game were apparently recorded on location, which is probably why Despelote looks to have such a strong look to it. This is what I’m talking about with expanding the medium. Autobiographical games aren’t all too common, it joins works like Cibele and That Dragon Cancer in a very small niche, but I hope that more people consider doing the same.
You can pick up Despelote on Steam now, and there’s even a 10% launch discount until May 15th.
