A new video game developed in Africa upends the Western museum narrative, putting players in the shoes of ethical thieves tasked with recovering African artifacts stolen during the colonial era. It is called Relooted and is the latest production from South African studio Nyamakop, which was unveiled in early June at the Summer Game Fest in Los Angeles, one of the industry’s most important events. Relooted is a side-scrolling platformer with puzzle elements, inspired by classic action games such as Tomb Raider or Prince of Persia. The game tells of an international treaty signed to facilitate the repatriation of African artifacts still held in Western museums, although the convention calls for the exclusive return of pieces on public display, leaving out those held in private collections. A clause that allows museums to circumvent the obligation to return simply by moving artifacts to inaccessible and guarded archives.
It is in this narrative context that the player intervenes: part of a Robin Hood-inspired crew of thieves, he or she must infiltrate museums, identify the target, design an exit plan, and finally steal the artifact back to its place of origin. The playful dynamic, then, ties directly into the debate on colonial cultural heritage, with a novel and provocative approach. The action takes place in a 21st century imagined through the prism of African futurism, following the signing of a treaty that was supposed to return African artifacts held in Western museums. However, a sudden turn of events undermines the agreement, forcing a team of specialists from different countries on the continent to join forces to recover 70 stolen objects. In terms of gameplay, this is a side-scrolling platformer with puzzle elements. Each mission requires you to inspect the museum structure, carefully plan entry and escape, and finally execute the heist in real time, with alarms going off and doors suddenly closing. No violence: the tone is reminiscent of big movie heists à la Ocean’s Eleven.
The project’s creative director, Ben Myres, explained in an interview published by Epic Games that all objects in the game are inspired by authentic artifacts still held by Western museums. The team conducted two years of research to select a limited number of objects for inclusion in the game from hundreds of documented examples. One of the examples cited by Myres is the Ngadji drum, made by the Pokomo people in Kenya to invoke deities or celebrate the rise of a new king. Confiscated by the British in 1902, it is still in the British Museum in London today, despite formal requests by Kenyan researchers for its return.
The artifacts, Myres says, were reconstructed in 3-D through publicly available photographs and scans. The task proved complex, since many of these objects are not visible to the public and are stored in museum deposits. The accuracy of the reproductions, however, was a priority for Nyamakop, who wanted to make the game experience as close to reality as possible, while not referencing real existing museums to avoid legal implications.
“I went to a bar dedicated to video games; my parents went to the British Museum,” said Myres, talking about the birth of the video game. “We met for dinner later, and my mom was furious because she had just seen that they had moved the entire facade of a temple in southern Turkey. She said like, ’This is crazy.’ And then she said, ’You should turn it into a game,’” then goes on to talk about the Ngadji drum. “The first Kenyans to see it in the last 100 years were in the 2010s. The person who saw the drum was a descendant of the king from whom it was originally taken. So these are not artifacts that were just found in the dust and excavated by archaeologists. These were still active cultures. There are not many opportunities for people here to create video games professionally. So if you’re offering people here that opportunity, and it happens to be an African-inspired thing, which you don’t see a lot of in games, people are pretty, pretty excited about doing it.”
The Nyamakop studio is based in Johannesburg, South Africa, but the development team consists of professionals from several African countries-Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Tanzania. This is the second title created by the group, following Semblance, released in 2018, which represented a milestone for the African video game industry: in fact, it was the first original title created in Africa to be released on a Nintendo console. Although Relooted does not yet have an official release date, you can already see some gameplay sequences in the trailer released during Summer Game Fest. The video shows settings inspired by Western museum architecture, guarded corridors, neon lights and complex paths along which characters must act strategically to complete the mission. Players will be able to choose from different team members, each with specific abilities, and tackle increasingly intricate missions as the game progresses. In addition to the play aspect, the project is part of the international debate on the restitution of cultural heritage, an issue that has involved academic institutions, museum bodies and governments for years. The game, while maintaining an accessible tone and appealing aesthetic, addresses the central issue of cultural property ownership, symbolic violence exercised through display, and historical memory. On Nyamakop’s official website, the studio describes itself as one of the leading independent developers in sub-Saharan Africa. The choice to produce a game with strong political and cultural implications reflects a journey of collective awareness, as well as a desire to participate in contemporary debate with the tools of digital language.
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| There is a video game where you are an ethical thief who steals art from Western museums to give back to Africa |
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