Relooted: A new videogame invites players to steal back African artefacts

Hindustan Times

09-08-2025

Finally, treasures from Kenya, Ethiopia, Benin and more, will be returned to their rightful homes… at least within the strategy game, Relooted. Players take on the role of Nomali, a parkour expert who works with a small crew, drawn from different African countries for their unique skills.
Built by the South African gaming company Nyamakop, the videogame has been seven years in the making (and is now at the post-production stage).
'There is so much we don't know about the history of the African continent, and so much propaganda we've internalised, simply because these artefacts were no longer here — to prove what our civilisations had been or to serve as reminders of what Africa had been capable of,' says Ben Myres, 32, co-founder of Nyamakop and creative director of Relooted.
The idea for the game came to him, he says, during a trip to the British Museum with his parents in 2017. 'My mother was horrified to see the Nereid Monument, a 4th-century-BCE sculpted tomb taken from Turkey in the 1800s, on display there,' he says.
You should develop a game about this, to show the world just how much was taken by colonisers and never returned, she said. It wasn't only about what was taken, Myres adds. 'It is also about how that looting changed the story Africa tells, about itself.'
As a white South African, he adds, it felt important to build this game in a way that represented the people reclaiming their culture.
(Storytellers have been attempting to right this record for decades. One of the most evocative examples is a science-fiction tale that seeks to answer the question: What might Africa have been if it had never been colonised? The answer, of course, is Wakanda, a nation leagues ahead of the rest of the world, in the Black Panther comics by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.)
Temples of doom
It wasn't only about what was taken from Africa, says Ben Myres. 'It is also about how that looting changed the story Africa tells about itself.'
Relooted is set a few decades in the future. A Transatlantic Returns Treaty has recently been signed, to ensure the return of African artefacts to their homelands.
Museum administrators around the world, now at risk of losing some of their most prized artefacts, identify a loophole: they only need to return African artefacts from among those on public display.
The role of the player, in Relooted, is to break into the museum vaults and return the rest anyway.
Determined to get his details right, Myres roped in South African artefacts conservator James Sulter. Working with writer Mohale Mashigo, who is also narrative director of the game, they scoured museum catalogues and news articles, to settle on the 70 real-life artefacts that would feature in Relooted.
On the final list is the Ngadji, a sacred drum of the Pokomo people of Kenya, which was taken during British rule in 1902, and believed to have been destroyed. It sits in the British Museum's storage vaults.
In 2016, Baiba Mjidho, a Pokomo elder, made the journey to Britain to see it, touch it, and ask for it to be returned. (The British Museum has consistently resisted such demands, offering instead to loan artefacts to their home countries, for display.)
Myres and Mohale Mashigo, a writer and narrative director of the game, scoured museum catalogues and news articles, to settle on the 70 artefacts that would feature in Relooted
Also in the game is a 19th-century sacred silver buffalo, a talisman meant to protect the king of Benin, and now in the possession of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
As the team conducted their research, they were particularly struck by the story of the Maqdala treasures. This haul included gold and silver processional crosses, chalices and weapons, as well as silk textiles and jewellery, taken by British troops from the fortress of the Ethiopian king Tewodros II (r. 1855-1868). Ninety of these objects are now housed at the British Museum.
'The sheer size of the loot was surprising to read about. About 15 elephants and 200 mules had to be used to carry it all down the mountain,' says Mashigo. 'We could probably develop six games based on the material we gathered during our research.'
Rewriting the record
The makers are keen to stress that the videogame isn't designed like a history lesson. The thrill of the heist is what drives it, Myres says.
The player takes on the role of Nomali, a parkour expert who must work with a small crew, drawn from different African countries for their unique skills, to steal back the 70 treasures.
Alarms go off, doors lock and security drones swoop in to prevent each heist.
The game's narrative provides some context for each artefact. Players can choose to delve deeper and learn more about each item at their pace.
The aesthetic is African futurist, drawing on real places, people and cultures. Players can expect to see iterations of real places in Johannesburg, with avatars representing the cultures of other African countries such as Angola, Congo, Cameroon, Kenya and Nigeria. 'Authenticity is a big part of the game,' Myres says. 'We wanted to ensure that Africans see these places, recognise them and feel represented in a fundamental way.'
The sacred silver buffalo from Benin. (metmuseum.org)
As part of the effort to right the record, there are notes within the plot that explain what each artefact meant, and still means, to its people. 'I want to correct the notion that these items were 'lost' or 'rescued from obscurity',' Myres says.
'It's not as if there were some guys walking through the savannah who tripped over various artefacts and thought, 'Oh my God, I must take this treasure that the local people don't care about and preserve it back in Europe',' he adds. 'A lot of the time these were precious objects that were worshipped and in use. They were taken as part of a larger destruction of whole civilisations.'