Rebecca Manzi Relooted, a South African video game, turns stealth gameplay into a powerful reflection on colonial-era looting and the return of Africa’s stolen cultural treasures.
@Nyamakop/YouTube
It’s called Relooted, and it’s the latest project from South African studio Nyamakop. At first glance, it looks like a stylish stealth-adventure game. But under the hood, it wrestles with a theme that remains as uncomfortable as it is urgent: the colonial appropriation of art.
It’s hardly a secret that many masterpieces displayed in Western museums were acquired through plunder and looting during the colonial era, particularly across Africa. Today, an astonishing 90% of sub-Saharan Africa’s cultural heritage is held in Western collections. That number isn’t just a statistic—it reflects a loss of identity as much as of objects. Thousands of cultural and spiritual artifacts, and even human remains, sit far from their places of origin, severing communities from essential parts of their own history.
Afrofuturism meets cultural reclamation
To transform this uncomfortable truth into an interactive medium, Nyamakop leaned into an Afrofuturist aesthetic. In Relooted, players take on the role of modern-day heroes tasked with “re-allocating” African artifacts exhibited in major Western museums and bringing them back home. Each mission unfolds in three acts: reconnaissance, planning the escape, and reclaiming the artifact. The structure recalls classic stealth and adventure games, but here it carries an unmistakable symbolic charge.
A video game as cultural reflection
Creative director Ben Myres admits that deciding which objects to include was one of the toughest challenges. “The pool of potential artifacts was simply too vast,” he explained. To narrow it down, the team spent two years collaborating with researchers. The result: every completed mission doubles as a learning experience. Players unlock an information card detailing the history of the piece, its cultural significance, and the story of the country it came from.
Relooted is not content to simply entertain. It wants to spark a broader discussion about how many Western collections were formed, and what unresolved questions remain from the colonial past. It’s part Black Panther, part Carmen Sandiego, and it demonstrates how video games can serve as a bridge between pop culture and historical awareness—provoking debates that too often remain on the sidelines.
Source: Relooted – Nyamakop
