Relooted: The video game challenging colonial theft by letting players reclaim African artefacts

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 colonial 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.

#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. pic.twitter.com/JKKOkXKZ6e

— Firstpost (@firstpost) June 30, 2025

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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.”

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“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.

“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.

“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.

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.