Despelote Finally Comes To Nintendo Switch On The Eve Of The Game Awards
Whether it takes home a trophy or not, Despelote is a winner.
As surprising as it might be, one of the most emotionally impactful games of 2025 is about soccer. Not a sports game in the traditional sense, Despelote instead follows a young boy whose obsession with soccer defines his life, especially the year that his home of Ecuador has qualified for the World Cup for the first time. First released on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox in May, Despelote earned Game Awards nominations for Best Debut Indie Game and Games for Impact, and just before the awards show, Nintendo Switch owners will have their chance to play, too.
Despelote will be available on Nintendo Switch starting on December 11, the same day we’ll see if it takes home a trophy from the Game Awards. Based on developer Julián Cordero’s own childhood, the game follows eight-year-old Julián as he watches, plays, and daydreams about soccer in the leadup to Ecuador’s first appearance at the World Cup. But while soccer means the world for the fictional Julián, Despelote is also a story about the political unrest that enveloped Quito, Ecuador in 2001, while the game’s star and his friends could focus on nothing but the next match.
The acclaimed Despelote comes to Nintendo Switch in December.
As much as it’s a game about soccer, Despelote is also a game about memory. It tells its story in a series of vignettes, often beginning in the middle of a scene like a half-remembered dream. Even its art style works to reinforce the idea that you’re watching a series of hazy memories, using crunchy, lo-fi versions of real places rendered in monochrome, as if the details are fading right before your eyes. Rather than pretending that perfect memory is possible, Despelote reshapes the events that cut through the haze, building poignant connections between the state of Ecuador in the early 2000s and the childhood of the real-life Julián. What remains vivid are scraps of overheard conversations, images of Julián’s childhood friends, and most of all, the time they all spent kicking soccer balls around their neighborhood.
While the World Cup is a framing device for Despelote’s story, it’s the childish back-yard games and the sheer sensation of kicking around a soccer ball that make up most of the game’s short two-hour run time. Played in first-person perspective, Despelote has you controlling Julián with one joystick and aiming and kicking the ball he’s almost always dribbling between his feet with the other. The effect puts you right in his shoes, and it’s one of the most engaging control schemes I’ve ever played with in a sports game. Consider it a sign of how good Despelote is that, despite the resulting wobbly camera making me motion sick when it aimed at the ball at Julián’s feet, I still kept coming back to the game in a handful of short bursts until I could actually finish it.
Despelote uses soccer to tell a larger story about memory and obsession.
If you’re not a soccer fan, it would be easy to dismiss Despelote as not a game for you, but to do so would be selling short the power of its story. Despelote captures a specific moment in time for its creator, but just as deftly, it captures a more universal feeling of childhood. Julián’s mind wanders when he’s forced to go to school or attend a wedding rather than play soccer. He sees the world’s possibilities as makeshift goal posts and fields to run through. And while it’s often an idyllic vision, Despelote also focuses in on the boredom and alienation that are a part of childhood as snippets of adult conversations break through, letting the more serious struggles of the grown-up world puncture Julián’s carefree afternoons.
By the end of Despelote, the camera turns from one memorable year to reflect on the process of growing up, and eventually, of turning childhood memories and hopes into the game itself. As easy as it would be to get caught in nostalgia, Despelote skillfully grapples with disappointment and self-deception more than it makes the past into some perfect thing to long for. Whatever the result of its Game Awards nomination is, Despelote is undoubtedly one of the year’s best games, worth checking out now if you missed it the first time around.
