Culture Rescue African artifacts from colonizers' museums in the heist game Relooted - Black people make a game about looting

Semblance studio Nyamakop is back with puzzles, action and a distinct story to tell.​

Jessica Conditt
Senior Editor
Sat, Jun 7, 2025, 2:44 AM GMT+3


Nyamakop

Relooted is a heist game about reclaiming African artifacts from the Western countries that stole them, developed by independent South African studio Nyamakop. Relooted is set in a future timeline where Western nations have signed a treaty to return plundered items to their African regions of origin, but things aren't going to plan. Western leaders are instead hiding the artifacts away in private collections, so it's up to a ragtag crew based in Johannesburg, South Africa, to strategize and steal them back.

Relooted is broken into missions, and each one includes a briefing about the artifact, an infiltration planning stage, and the heist. Gameplay is a mix of puzzle and action as you case each building, set up your run, and then execute the plan. Once you grab your target artifact, the security alarms go off and you have a limited amount of time to escape, so thorough preparation is key.

Spoiler: Archive

In the Day of the Devs reveal video for Relooted, producer Sithe Ncube cites a wild statistic from a pivotal 2018 report on African cultural heritage, saying, "90 percent of sub-Saharan African culture heritage is in the possession of Western collections. That is millions upon millions of deeply important cultural, spiritual and personal artifacts, including human remains, that aren't in their rightful place."

The locations in Relooted are fictional, but the 70 artifacts you have to steal back are real, and they're all currently in Western and private collections, far from their original homes and owners.

Nyamakop is one of the largest independent games studios in sub-Saharan Africa, with about 30 developers working on Relooted right now. Its previous game, the globular platformer Semblance, was the first African-developed IP to ever come to a Nintendo console, hitting the Switch in 2018. In order to get Semblance on the Switch, Nyamakop co-founder Ben Myres had to bootstrap his way around the world, buying one-way tickets and finding new partners on the fly in a daisy chain of game festival appearances. Here's how Myres explained it to Engadget at E3 2018:

"The entry curve into being an indie game developer in South Africa is like a cliff face. Because you don't have the contacts, the platform holders like Xbox, Sony. You don't have reps that live in your country. The press that matter are all here. There isn't a big enough market locally to sell to, so you have to make works to sell to the West, which means you have to go to Western shows and you have to meet Western press. So basically, if you're not traveling a ton, you're not going to be able to make it."



Nyamakop has grown significantly since 2018, and Relooted is an unabashedly African game built by a majority-POC team, Myres and Ncube said in 2024.

"There is the thing about making games for Africans — we say that a lot," Ncube told GamesIndustry.biz. "We say that should be a thing, we should make games for Africans because we're playing games that were made in the West. But will people even play those games, if you make them? And then if you make games targeting people ... even if you were to make one that's really good, there's no guarantee that you'll have a lot of people playing it. So I think there's some level of confusion, I can say, in terms of unexplored aspects of the African games market."

Relooted is in development for Steam, the Epic Games Store and Xbox Series X/S, and while it doesn't yet have a firm release date, it's available to wishlist.

Source (Archive)

 

[SITHRAK!]

Nobody thought this concept was tacky before when it was white dudes stealing from rich faggots instead of poqs

The absence of modern day niggerology politics makes a difference, doesn’t it?

 

[Make Wraith Wraithy Again]

Please no Lara Croft nude code on this one.

 

[Mike Matei's Penis]

Can they steal the shitty afrofuturist art out of other games? I don't know why Johnny Cage keeps that ugly african head in his apartment.

 

[FILTH Tourist]

They would be ones I’d return for sure. Greece is entitled to them and has a dedicated space to keep them safe. We don’t really have a leg to stand on on that one, it’s their cultural history and should go back.

Why? The Greeks didn't seem to want them when the British first collected them. Old artifacts are usually a case of one man's trash is another man's treasure. Greece was full of ruins and they are ruins for a reason (aka the locals didn't care about them) so the British historians and collectors come in and start digging up all sorts of neat things to bring back to the UK. Only when it became apparent that these old ruins and artifacts can bring in tourism dollars did Greece start making a stink. It is the same story with every other country that complains about "looted" artifacts. It would be like a Japanese buisnessman with a fascination with American cars going to Detroit and finding all sorts of neat relics from the automotive golden age in the abandoned buildings and junkyards, then flying them back to Japan to set up a successful museum. Then years later Detroit tries to sue him for the stuff because they realize they could make money with their own museum but he already has all the good stuff.

 

[Post Reply]

I'll wait for the Foot Locker DLC to drop.

 

[Disdainer of the Plebs]

Nah, they'll complain that the "wrong" people are buying it, when every random Youtuber plays it just to mock it, and they aren't black enough.

Personally, I'm in favor of the game happening in real life. If you've ever been to a museum, the absolute worst, most depressing part is the quarter-wing dedicated to "African Culture". Just wall after wall covered in the same shitty-looking, low-effort wood and cow-dung masks, donated to a passing Brit by the tribe that killed whoever made the masks.

Museums have massive vaults filled with art from around the world with no room to display it all, yet they insist on wasting valuable wall space to some forgotten African culture (usually only a few centuries old, at most) that was enslaved by the tribe next door and sold to Arabs, always represented entirely by a mask or throwing knife or very rarely some piece of unadorned pottery.

Well we should give the Africans their artifacts back so we can actually show the nice ones. The Africans will destroy their cultural artifacts and we get to put our nice things on display in our nice museums. Two birds one stone.

 

[Turkey Beef]

this is a great idea for a game, at last we get a realistic depiction of 'enlightened' House Negroes in what they're best at: looting. Someone should do a Target mod as well.

including human remains, that aren't in their rightful place."

I actually do agree with this to a degree. Digging up burial sites and then displaying them to retarded tourists isn't a good thing. I guess some of the Egyptian tombs had already been ransacked or demolished by muslims, but putting an actual mummy on display is pretty degrading to the human spirit.

 

[Snekposter]

Isn't this supposed to be a stealth game? Why are they dressed like that? Bright colors and loud clothing? You might as well drive your stolen Mercedes Benz G Wagon through the front entrance and just shoot all the guards and call the police on yourself.

If there's anything I've learned from Payday 2 its that stealth is always just an option.

 

[BulkForceFive]

Well we should give the Africans their artifacts back so we can actually show the nice ones. The Africans will destroy their cultural artifacts and we get to put our nice things on display in our nice museums. Two birds one stone.

Exactly. The British Museum should be filled with Saxon helmets and Spitfires and the ball from the FUTBOL game where they beat those bloody continental wankers, stuff that makes Britons proud of who they are.

The fact that the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich doesn't have enough space for all their ship models but there's ugly straw toy boats made by some cannibals in display cases is a travesty.

 

[Oilspill Battery]

Why? The Greeks didn't seem to want them when the British first collected them.

I, for one, love it when ignorant retards start speaking with authority on subjects they clearly haven't got the first clue about.

You are aware that it was not the Greeks who gave the marbles away right? It was the Ottomans that were occupying Greece at the time. Greece, that literally 20 years later revolted because they didn't approve of ottoman rule.

And fun fact, the ottomans didn't even give the british permission to take the marbles, the only surviving italian copy of the permit says they only had permission to make casts.

And even more fun fact, Turkey says they've searched through the ottoman a archives, and they can't find any evidence ANY permit existed to begin with.

Greece was full of ruins and they are ruins for a reason (aka the locals didn't care about them)

No you dumb fucking retard. The parthenon is a ruin because the Ottomans used it as a gunpowder magazine that the Venetians blew up. Before that point throughout the entirety of greek history it was a well maintained temple and before the ottomans occupied Greece it was a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary and had been since 600 AD.

I geuinely have no idea how you managed to stuff so much ignorance in a single comment. Shitbongs really are the niggers of europe. Completely ignorant of anything that doesn't directly affect them, they loot everything, then lie about looting it, then claim that the loot is better off with them anyway.

 

[FILTH Tourist]

I, for one, love it when ignorant retards start speaking with authority on subjects they clearly haven't got the first clue about.

You are aware that it was not the Greeks who gave the marbles away right? It was the Ottomans that were occupying Greece at the time. Greece, that literally 20 years later revolted because they didn't approve of ottoman rule.

And fun fact, the ottomans didn't even give the british permission to take the marbles, the only surviving italian copy of the permit says they only had permission to make casts.

And even more fun fact, Turkey says they've searched through the ottoman a archives, and they can't find any evidence ANY permit existed to begin with.


No you dumb fucking retard. The parthenon is a ruin because the Ottomans used it as a gunpowder magazine that the Venetians blew up. Before that point throughout the entirety of greek history it was a well maintained temple and before the ottomans occupied Greece it was a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary and had been since 600 AD.

I geuinely have no idea how you managed to stuff so much ignorance in a single comment. Shitbongs really are the niggers of europe. Completely ignorant of anything that doesn't directly affect them, they loot everything, then lie about looting it, then claim that the loot is better off with them anyway.

That is a lot of words to say "Thank you Brits for saving our artifacts and displaying them in a museum for all to enjoy"

 

[Oilspill Battery]

That is a lot of words to say "Thank you Brits for saving our artifacts and displaying them in a museum for all to enjoy"

Yes, the museum that in about 10 years will be burned down by the Albion Caliphate for being offensive to allah.

 

[FILTH Tourist]

Yes, the museum that in about 10 years will be burned down by the Albion Caliphate for being offensive to allah.

Still have lasted longer than if they were in the Greeks custody. Don't want them to end up like that Pantheon, right?

 

[Oilspill Battery]

Still have lasted longer than if they were in the Greeks custody. Don't want them to end up like that Pantheon, right?

They lasted 1600 years in greek custody in mint condition and only became ruins when the ottomans got their hands on them.

 

[FILTH Tourist]

They lasted 1600 years in greek custody in mint condition and only became ruins when the ottomans got their hands on them.

And they would have been destroyed or lost if they remained in Ottoman hands for not the British taking them.

No you dumb fucking retard. The parthenon is a ruin because the Ottomans used it as a gunpowder magazine that the Venetians blew up.

I am also a little confused on how this counters my point. The pantheon was destroyed and was left as ruins rather than try to rebuild them (because the locals decided to leave them as ruins) and it stayed that way until the 1900s when the Greeks started restoring it as a point of national pride (and sweet, sweet tourism money).

 

[Oilspill Battery]

And they would have been destroyed or lost if they remained in Ottoman hands for not the British taking them.

They wouldn't have remained in ottoman hands because greece revolved and became indepedant literally 20 years later. This point is also moot.

I am also a little confused on how this counters my point. The pantheon was destroyed and was left as ruins rather than try to rebuild them (because the locals decided to leave them as ruins) and it stayed that way until the 1900s when the Greeks started restoring it as a point of national pride (and sweet, sweet tourism money).

Greece started restoring the parthenon in 1838, literally 9 years after becoming an independant state. Worth noting that at the same time greece was also fighting to establish itself as an actor on the world stage and went through multiple wars to reclaim territory and shortly after it was done reclaiming territory and could focus inward 2 world wars happened back to back.