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Hindustan Times
09-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Relooted: A new videogame invites players to steal back African artefacts
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. ( 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.'
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First Post
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- First Post
Relooted: The video game challenging colonial theft by letting players reclaim African artifacts
The game developed by South African studio Nyamakop, revealed at the Summer Game Fest in Los Angeles in June, is set in an imaginary future in which one plays as members of a pan-African crew tasked with reclaiming 70 stolen artefacts and returning them to their rightful homelands. read more Western museums boast of a wide variety of artefacts from across the world, though the manner in which they were sourced – especially from countries that European colonian powers had ruled over for centuries – remains a controversial to this day. And while these museums, including and especially the British Museum in London, may or may not agree to return the artefacts to the countries they were 'transported' from back in the day, a newly-launched game aims to fix historical wrongs by allowing players to 'steal' these artefacts from said museums. Albeit in the digital world. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD #FirstpostAfrica: A new South African video game titled Relooted is turning heads by letting players reclaim stolen African artefacts from Western museums. @alysonle tells you more. — Firstpost (@firstpost) June 30, 2025 Relooted, developed by South Africa game studio Nyamakop, was revealed at the Summer Game Fest in Los Angeles in June. It is a stealth-driven game set in an imaginary future in which one plays as members of a pan-African crew tasked with reclaiming 70 stolen artefacts – all of which exist in real life – and returning them to their rightful homelands. From Kenya's Ngadji drum to Zambia's 'Broken Hill Man' Artefacts such as the sacred Ngadji drum from Kenya's Pokomo community, which was confiscated by Britain in 1902 and is currently housed at the British Museum. 'Its removal destabilised the community,' producer Sithe Ncube, one of a team of 30 working on the game, told AFP, while adding that players 'can see where it's from… and read about the history.' 'Sometimes the stories behind these (artefacts) are actually very upsetting. It makes you see how much colonialism has affected… and shaped the world,' she added. The game also features the 'Broken Hill Man' – a skull said to be about 300,000 years old originating from Ncube's native country Zambia that is currently held at London's Natural History Museum. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD 'Africans, to actually see these things that are part of their own culture, have to get a visa, pay for flights and go to a European country. My whole life, I've never seen 'Broken Hill Man',' Ncube added. A French government report has estimated that up to 90 per cent of sub-Saharan African cultural heritage is in possession of Western nations. Ben Myres, creative director of the Johannesburg-based studio, goes on to add that the idea behind the bold title came from a family visit to the British Museum. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD 'So, actually, me and my parents were visiting London about seven years ago, and I went to some game dev bar and my parents went to the British Museum, and then we came home in the evening and hung out, and my mom was filled with rage because in the British Museum, they have the entire front of a temple from the south of Turkey that they managed to move to the British Museum. And she was just aghast at the scale of that sort of looting,' Myres told Shacknews. 'And then she literally said, 'You should make a game.' And I was like, 'Oh, I don't know about the mechanics. What are the mechanics going to be about lifting a building out of a museum? That's usually a little tricky.' So then I basically, since that point, have been trying to figure out how to make a heist game,' he added. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD While Nyamakop hasn't set an official release date for Relooted, one can add it to their wishlist on Steam, Xbox Series X|S and the Epic Games Store.
Miami Herald
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Miami Herald
New heist video game lets players reclaim 70 real African artifacts from museums
An independent video game studio from South Africa plans to release a game that allows players to take back 'real African artifacts from Western museums.' Nyamakop, the developers of 'Relooted,' call it an 'Africanfuturist heist game,' according to a June 7 news release from Mooncat Games. Set at the end of the 21st century, the game's plot involves the fictional 'Transatlantic Returns Treaty,' designed to facilitate the return of African artifacts from museums to their rightful owners. The treaty gets amended and museums are only obligated to return artifacts on public display, giving them a loophole to exploit, according to a press release from Nyamakop. The game features 70 artifacts that need to be repatriated, 'all of which exist in real-life and are of huge cultural, historical, and spiritual significance to the people they were taken from,' the studio said in the release. All the Western museums in the game, however, are fictional. One of the artifacts players must reclaim is a drum from Kenya. The people of Kenya believed the drum, which held great spiritual significance, had been destroyed, when it reality, it has been in storage at the British Museum for the last century, Ben Myres, the creative director of 'Relooted,' told Epic Games. The first Kenyan person to lay eyes on the drum in 2010 was a descendant of the king from whom it was stolen in 1870, Myres told the outlet. 'We want to give people information about how important these artifacts were to the people they were taken from,' he told the outlet. 'And then people can make their own decisions if they think the artifacts should stay in the museums or not.' Game experience Planning an escape route is just as important as the heist itself, according to the studio. The side scroller-style game allows players to recruit a team with skills that will complement the mission and time to 'case' the museums to plan their route, a process that involves a series of puzzles, creators said. When the artifact is removed, a countdown timer starts, triggering what 'should feel like you're in the fun, montage part of a heist movie,' the studio said. 'Relooted' does not yet have a release date. Nyamakop's first game, Semblance, launched in 2018. It was 'the first African developed IP to launch on any Nintendo console ever' and is ranked as one of Metacritic's top 100 best PC games of 2018, according to the studio.
First Post
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- First Post
"Relooted": South African Game Reclaims Stolen Artefacts From Western Museums
"Relooted": South African Game Reclaims Stolen Artefacts From Western Museums | Firstpost Africa "Relooted": South African Game Reclaims Stolen Artefacts From Western Museums | Firstpost Africa A new South African video game titled Relooted is turning heads by letting players reclaim stolen African artefacts from Western museums. Created by studio Nyamakop, the game is a side-scrolling puzzle-platformer set in a futuristic world where African heroes pull off digital heists to recover real-world treasures like the Benin Bronzes and Kenya's sacred Ngadji drum. Unveiled at the Summer Game Fest in Los Angeles, the game has struck a chord with Africans and the diaspora. Developers say it's not about promoting theft, but about reclaiming history, sparking conversations, and giving Africa the power to tell its own story. See More
Malay Mail
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Malay Mail
Stealing back what was stolen: South African game ‘Relooted' targets colonial spoils (VIDEO)
JOHANNESBURG, June 28 — Under the cover of darkness, Nomali jumped over a wall, burst into a museum and snatched a human skull from a pedestal before escaping through a window to the wail of an alarm. The daring heist was not the work of a real-life criminal. Nomali is the protagonist of a new action-packed video game where players 'reclaim' artefacts taken from African countries to be displayed in the West. Developed by Johannesburg studio Nyamakop, Relooted is set in an imaginary future but tackles a topical issue: calls for Western institutions to return to Africa the spoils of colonisation. Players are tasked with taking back 70 artefacts — all of which exist in real life — with a 'team of African citizens', said producer Sithe Ncube, one of a team of 30 working on the game. The items include the 'Benin Bronzes' sculptures removed from the former kingdom of Benin more than 120 years ago, and which The Netherlands officially returned to Nigeria on June 21. Another is the sacred Ngadji drum from Kenya's Pokomo community, which was confiscated by British colonial authorities in 1902. 'Its removal destabilised the community,' Ncube said as an animated drawing of the wooden instrument flashed on her computer. Players 'can see where it's from... and read about the history,' she said, giving a demo. 'Is it stealing?' On the screen a crew of characters in Afrofuturist costumes debated a plan to recover the remains of Tanzanian chiefs hanged by German colonial forces. One asked: 'Is it stealing to take back what was stolen?' 'We are going to do whatever it takes to take back Africa's belongings, and we are going to do it together,' said the character Nomali. 'Sometimes the stories behind these (artefacts) are actually very upsetting,' Ncube told AFP. 'It makes you see how much colonialism has affected... and shaped the world.' Growing up in Zambia, she knew of her country's iconic 'Broken Hill Man', a skull about 300,000 years old held in London's Natural History Museum and which is also featured in Relooted. But it was only when working on the game that Ncube realised how many African cultural artefacts were held abroad, she said. In France alone, museums stored about 90,000 objects from sub-Saharan Africa, according to a 2018 report commissioned by the government. 'Africans, to actually see these things that are part of their own culture, have to get a visa, pay for flights and go to a European country,' Ncube said. 'My whole life, I've never seen 'Broken Hill Man'.' Sithe Ncube, producer at Nyamakop video game studio, plays a soon to be launched video game called 'Relooted' at their office space in Rosebank, near Johannesburg, June 20, 2025. — AFP pic Skewed identity The looting of artefacts over centuries robbed communities of their 'archives' and 'knowledge systems', said Samba Yonga, co-founder of the digital Museum of Women's History in Zambia. 'Our history predates colonisation by millennia,' she told AFP, but many people 'don't even realise that we have a skewed sense of self and identity.' Reclaiming these objects would enable 'a shift in how the next generation views their culture and identity,' she said. The same hope underpinned Relooted, which was unveiled this month at Los Angeles' Summer Game Fest where it attracted a lot of interest from the diaspora and other Africans, Ncube said. 'I hope that the game encourages people from other African countries to want to tell their own stories and bring these things to light,' she said. One character felt personal for the producer: Professor Grace, Nomali's grandmother and described as 'the brains behind the mission'. 'I started seeing my own grandmother in her,' Ncube said with emotion. 'She represents a connection between our generations, fighting for the same thing we've always been fighting for.' — AFP
