There is an important museum in Dakar, Senegal, called the Museum of Black Civilisations. The museum exists to promote the contribution of Black civilisations to the universal heritage of humanity by demonstrating the dispersal of Black peoples across the globe. Nymakop, a small game developer in South Africa, found one particular story from this museum so inspiring that they built a whole game around it. According to an interview with Ben Myres, creative director and CEO at Nyamkop, the story goes that some of the exhibits in this museum were intentionally left empty, as the curators were waiting for African artefacts to come back from the West. Relooted is a game founded on the idea that African countries have a right to display their cultural heritage and therefore have a valid interest in ensuring that those artefacts are returned from private collections and foreign museums to their places of origin.
With inspiration like this, it should be no surprise that the narrative in Relooted is uncompromisingly bold and ambitious. Players take the role of Nomali, a sports scientist and gymnast, who finds herself wrapped up in a plot to repatriate stolen African artefacts. Her grandmother, a retired history professor, informs Nomali that Western museums are exploiting a loophole in the Transatlantic Returns Treaty by taking their African artefacts off of public display in favour of private viewings where the treaty is inapplicable. The rest of the game follows Nomali, along with several other characters added to this liberation task force, on their mission to “re-loot” African artefacts from around the world. A very compelling plot, not only because it created the perfect setup for a modern-day heist tale, but also because of its humanitarian message of decolonisation. Artefacts can have immense cultural, historical, and spiritual significance to their creators. To return those artefacts to their people of origin is a noble pursuit, even if it is rife with geopolitical complexities. I found that the writing team behind Relooted did a wonderful job of lifting up the South African diaspora by giving us an empathetic lens into the ways they think about their native identity amid the reality of imperialism.
The gameplay of Relooted sees players freely roaming the crew’s hideout or visiting Johannesburg to talk with NPCs about their own stories, as well as examining the artefacts they have discovered so far. Once satisfied, players will then accept a new mission briefing and learn some real-life history (splendid!) about the artefacts that are next on the hit list. This will start the heist in earnest, which breaks down into three key phases. First, there is a planning phase where you will guide a drone around the target location to spy on the grounds and mark points of interest. Secondly, Nomali will infiltrate the target location on foot, solving platforming puzzles and exploring environments to find hidden, secondary artefacts or scannable objects. Finally, Nomali will nab the mission-critical artefacts, which will set off an alarm and trigger a sprint section to the extraction point. At the conclusion of each mission, you are scored according to how thorough you were in finding collectibles, how quick you were in your escape, and how well you executed the platforming. These phases of Relooted form the core gameplay loop. Yet, as noted earlier, this is a very ambitious game, so each of these phases has more nuance worth examining.
I found the gameplay phases to get more and more interesting as you moved through them in order. Starting with perhaps my least favourite phase, “casing the joint”, I felt that this section suffered from over-tutorialisation and too much hand-holding in the UI. While I loved the opportunity to scope out the building I would soon traverse, both the narration from the characters and the way they would highlight things on the UI for me to see throughout the space were too heavy-handed. I would have enjoyed the ability to use the drone to follow my own curiosities in this phase, marking the map with custom markers that fit my planning, instead of being forced to click through the things the game wanted me to see.
This extends to the way the game is taught to the player as well, with every new mechanic and character added to the crew requiring a lengthy, tightly scripted tutorial before you can advance the plot. I realise some of these UI features, even the “case-the-joint” phase in its entirety, are optional, but I would rather have the opportunity to play through all the features using my own creativity rather than to miss them entirely.
Similarly, I found that the exploration phase was a touch too long in most instances, even if it had much more to offer than the planning phase. The puzzle-platforming elements, in which I discovered collectibles and planned my exit route, offered some unique strategic challenges. At the same time, this section felt a little too “gamey” for me, as many of the levels asked the player to do the same thing, over and over. I can’t remember how many times I had to push an identical table on a pressure plate to open a door. It was as if a sole architect firm scored all the building contracts in the game. The environments you explore in this phase are so cool, each with their own visual design flair; I just wish the variety of the platforming elements within them matched their distinctiveness.
Despite how the first two phases of gameplay offer a sedated introduction to the heist, the final phase is a high-octane joyride. The running phase of Relooted is the game at its finest. This section builds on the enthusiasm of the script with vibrant shades of parkour-platforming. Nomali has the wind in her hair as she is running through environments at breakneck speed, either to escape from a heist or to give chase to a particular subject. The flow-based parkour mechanics reward momentum and snap decisions as you choose from several different paths forwards on the fly. Players will also need to time their button presses to give Nomali a speed boost over and under certain obstacles on her run, cranking up the pace to a genuinely thrilling spectacle. During these sprints, there is a timer counting down to Nomali’s demise, which only contributed to the adrenaline I felt while clambering over obstacles and gaining just enough speed to perfectly vault over a gap in my route.
Stringing together a succession of perfect platforming jumps in Relooted is highly rewarding, not only because it feels so buttery-smooth when done right, but it also ramps up the tension in the script as Nomali invariably makes it out of danger just in time. The soundtrack rises to the occasion to amplify the narrative moment and set the trajectory for the escape sequence. Likewise, the rest of Nomali’s crew will be waiting for her at key junctions along her run to either open a path or help her manoeuvre past certain obstacles with their individual toolkits. The heist was a collaborative effort, both in the story and the game mechanics of Relooted, and this allowed me to connect deeply with Nomali’s mission of repatriation. As a player, I felt like I was creating my own heist-movie montage of leaps, slides, and hurdles while my team and I catapulted Nomali to the getaway car. I finished each sequence with my heart pounding in my chest, proud of what I had accomplished.
The wonder of Relooted is that the exhilarating gameplay is further embellished by its colourful presentation. Each location that Nomali visits is a diorama full of vibrant detail and little design intricacies. You will parkour your way across a scrapyard, a city skyline, a house of horrors, a buzzing Johannesburg neighbourhood, and many distinct private residences. The animations in the cutscenes are slick with impressive motion capture, even if the lip sync felt off a little at times. What’s more, the sound design in the game is exuberant and engaging. Not only is the fully voiced cast a high mark of vocal talent (sourced from a variety of African nations), and the sound effects are crisp as ever, but also the OST for Relooted is truly a banger. After finishing the game, I went back and listened to the music because it was able to transport me to Africa with energy and dance-orientated rhythms.
