Relooted, a new video game from African-based studio Nyamakop, tasks players with stealing African artifacts from museums and private mansions to return them to their rightful historical owners.
At first glance, it might look like a purely fictional affair, but its creators want you to know that every featured artifact is real.
“We didn’t have to make anything up about these artifacts, because the history is out there,” said Mohale Mashigo, Relooted’s narrative director.
Players control Nomali, a young woman with an athletic background and penchant for parkour and free running, who has returned from Tanzania to visit family in a near-future Johannesburg.
Frustrated at Western museums’ recent actions to hide away their African collections — defying a transatlantic repatriation treaty — Nomali’s grandmother recruits her and a small team to infiltrate museums and private collectors’ mansions and reclaim key artifacts to return them to their rightful owners and descendants in Africa.
Experts estimate that hundreds of thousands of African artifacts are held outside the continent. UNESCO estimates that between 90 and 95 per cent of them are in Western institutions alone.
Many were looted by Western colonialists. Those items that did not end up in museums and cultural institutions in the West circulated and in some cases remain on the black market or with unknown collectors.
In one of the early missions in Relooted, you’re tasked with reclaiming two of the Benin Bronzes, part of a larger collection belonging to the Kingdom of Benin, modern-day Nigeria. Many of them have since been repatriated from Germany and Scotland to Nigeria, though some remain in British museums.
Avoiding ‘Wakandification’ of African stories
Nyamakop’s first game, a cartoony platformer called Semblance, had no obvious nods to the studio’s African origins.
Creative director Ben Myres, who is based in Johannesburg, was initially worried that “African-themed, African-inspired games” would be too financially risky. That all changed with a Marvel movie.
“When Black Panther came out in mid-2018, which apparently also was about reclaiming African artifacts, at least slightly, I sort of shifted and I was like … maybe now’s the time to do it,” he said.
It was paramount for the studio to ground the game’s story in reality, even if the characters and visual style might also fit in a Saturday morning cartoon block.
“These are real countries, real artifacts. And then we don’t run into the danger of the ‘Wakandification’ of a story about Africa,” said Mashigo, referring to the fictional African nation where the Black Panther films are primarily set.
“When it’s science fiction set in real places in the future, it almost becomes a vision rather than a fantasy,” added Myres.
Casing the joint
When Nomali’s team huddles for their mission briefing, players get a quick history lesson in the artifacts they’re planning to liberate. You’ll want to drink in the educational tour while it lasts, though, because you’ll have too much to worry about during the levels themselves.
Each level starts with Nomali casing the joint: planning a route and assessing security like auto-sealing doors and security cameras. Once a path is chosen, players race along the two-dimensional screen, avoiding attack drones and leaping across obstacles for a speed boost to reach the getaway vehicle.
As the game progresses, Nomali builds a team; many of the members give you abilities to pull off increasingly complex heists. Her younger brother Trevor, for example, can unlock certain doors and help access items held in safes. Acrobat Ndedi uses his zipline to carry Nomali up and down different floors or between buildings.
Ocean’s Eleven, not Heat
Other than drones or robots that can slow Nomali down with electric-shock attacks, you won’t see hand-to-hand combat or shootouts with humans.
That’s by design, according to Myres.
“There aren’t really a lot of great references for sort of, like, Ocean’s Eleven kinds of heist games. They often will end up like [the Michael Mann film] Heat — like burglary, shooting, stuff like that,” he said.
It’s a smart focus for a relatively small studio like Nyamakop and makes it stand out from the deluge of retro-inspired brawlers on gaming stores these days.
When everything works, Relooted feels like a combination of a classic adventure-and-puzzle game and a more modern, run-based game like Trials.
Players will feel the pull to replay levels again and again, tightening their runs and refining their escape plans to get faster completion times.
Meanwhile, the game’s story is surprisingly fleshed out, thanks mostly to the main cast’s charming voice work and the vibrant art style. Nomali’s relationships with her crew especially shine with her family members — such as the natural love-hate she has for her bratty young brother Trevor and her loving respect for her grandmother, who instigated the operation.
On the other hand, getting a plan wrong can conjure frustration, similar to getting stuck in confounding logistical puzzles in classic point-and-click adventure games.
You could spend upwards of 10 minutes meticulously planning your escape route, only to find yourself stuck because you used a table to prop up your leap toward a high ledge instead of holding a security shutter open, forcing you to re-evaluate your entire route from Step 1.
As It Happens6:28Relooted is a heist game where the player reclaims stolen artifacts from museums
Sithe Ncube says people from formerly colonized countries often wonder what it would be like to take back the artifacts that were stolen from their lands and placed in museums. In the new video game Relooted, players can do just that. Ncube, the game’s producer, spoke to As It Happens host Nil Kӧksal
The minor missteps won’t slow down Nomali and crew, however. Relooted is a memorable time for what will likely be many players’ first encounter with an African-based developer team.
Much like the Assassin’s Creed games, which are steeped in history, Myres hopes that Relooted can introduce players to potentially dozens of stories from African history they might not have known before.
And no, he’s not advocating that players start their own real-life crew.
“If someone steals an artifact and leaves a note like, ‘This one’s for Relooted,’ I will be like … ohhh. That’s a little awkward.”
Relooted is out Feb. 10 on PC and Xbox, including Xbox Game Pass.
