A new video game called Relooted from South African studio Nyamakop will allow players to repatriate real African artefacts.
Via Epic Games, the heist game is set in an Africanfuturism-themed 21st century following a deal that promised to return African artefacts from Western museums.
But with the deal spoiled, players and their team of crew members from different African countries must work together to take back 70 artefacts.
Ben Myres, creative director on Relooted and co-founder of Nyamakop, said it was a struggle to find enough real artefacts to include in the game.
He told Epic Games: “It was quite an involved process. We had two researchers over two years. There were so many.
“We looked for artifacts with great stories in terms of how they were looted. Why were they important to people? Just anything associated with them.”
Real African artefacts in new heist game
The Nyamakop team created the artefacts in Relooted as 3D models using the few images available. One object in the game is a drum from Kenya.
“This is the most spiritually important artifact to them,” Myres said. “They thought it was destroyed. It turns out that it’s been in the British Museum storage for the last 100 years.”
While the artefacts featured in the game are real, none of the museums are based on real-world locations.
When users manage to acquire an artefact, it can be viewed in a “home base” area of the game, where players can learn about the objects.
“We want to give people information about how important these artifacts were to the people they were taken from,” Myres said.
“And then people can make their own decisions if they think the artifacts should stay in the museums or not.”
Nyamakop’s first game, Semblance, came out in 2018. It was the first African-developed IP to ever launch on a Nintendo console.
Relooted does not have a release date yet, but it is in development for Steam, the Epic Games Store and Xbox Series X|S.
Images courtesy of Nyamakop
