In recent years, there has been a move towards museums in the West returning artefacts to Africa, and anywhere else in the world that fell victim to Europe’s colonial plunder. But this has been limited in scope; there is still a large number of artefacts which countries in Africa want back, and the process of repatriation is often an arduous one, involving lengthy campaigns and diplomatic wrangling. Wouldn’t it be more fun if you could just break into these institutions with a crew of righteous thieves and make off with their ill-got loot?
This is the question posed by Relooted, a forthcoming game from South African video game studio Nyamakop. It’s set in the near future, where an international treaty has compelled Western museums to return African artefacts to their rightful homes – but only if they’re on public display. Unscrupulous museums have got around this loophole by hiding the artefacts in high-security private facilities, which sets the stage for a series of 70 elaborate heists – think an anti-colonial Tombraider crossed with Oceans 11. According to Nyamakop’s website, the crew members are “everyday citizens with pretty normal careers from different countries in Africa.”
All of the artefacts featured in the game are inspired by real-life objects, as creative director Ben Myres told Epic Games. We looked for artefacts with great stories in terms of how they were looted,” he said. “Why were they important to people? Just anything associated with them.” This includes the Ngadji drum, a Kenyan drum used in religious and political ceremonies, which has been languishing in a British museum storage facility for over 100 years.
The game’s aesthetic is inspired by African Futurism, which – as Myres says – is more specific and drawn from existing culture than the broader Afrofuturism. “Every member of the heist crew is from a specific country, culture, and ethnicity, and all of their clothing references for making their design are only from that regional culture rather than from some collage place,” Myres told Epic. In line with this approach, the game’s development team includes people Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Tanzania, as well as South Africa, where the studio is based.
The release date for the game still hasn’t been announced, but you can see visuals for it in the official trailer, which was unveiled at the Summer Games Fest in Los Angeles earlier this month. It’s about time the British Museum, and other institutions like it, got its comeuppance – even if for now it’s just a virtual one.
