despelote
made with sebastian valbuena, ian berman, gabe cuzzillo. and we had help from a bunch of other people. published by panic. released in 2025.
i worked on this game for almost 7 years and i poured my soul into it.
i gave a GDC talk about it recently which helped me make sense of why we made it the way we did. u should watch it if u want to learn more about the game and this vision of "capturing the real world through videogames".
a lot of people wrote some very nice things about the game, here are some of my favorites:
- digital trends: miraculous slice-of-life soccer game pulls a hat trick
- noescapevg: an ode to a dream
- eurogamer: a beautiful game
- rock paper shotgun: moves the goal posts
- jacob geller: more games that save the best for last
it also won and was nominated to a few awards, most notably:
- amaze: most amazing award
- bafta: game beyond entertainment (+ nomination for debut game)
- igf: excellence in audio (+ nominations for grand prize, narrative and nuovo)
- the game awards: nomination for games for impact and best debut indie game
- it also led me to be selected to forbes 30 under 30
we made a bunch of fun trailers for it over the years but i especially like the fifth trailer gabe made
also, listen to the soundtrack that sebastian made for the game. ian mixed in a bunch of the ambience recordings he made in quito and it is wonderful. you can listen to it on all major streaming platforms.