Relooted: The Video Game that Shines Light on Africa’s Repatriation and Restoring Future Identity

Colonization might have longed ended in Africa but its baggage is still discussed, “Relooted” again ignites the question about Africa’s artifacts stolen during colonization. Relooted is a video game where the players form a crew and plot to reclaim artifacts scattered in different Western museums. This game was created by South Africa developer, Nyamakop, and it is set to make its debut across gaming platforms. The game has its setting in futuristic Johannesburg, South Africa. It is moments of clarity and vindication, as the cry for repatriation seemed to have died down, but Relooted can spark important discussions.

The crew players for the video game are comprises of scientists, computer programmers and MMA fighters, these are like perfect team players to reclaim something as important as artifacts, which carries people’s identity and origin, everyone deploying their various expertise in the plot to have the artifacts back again. The crew players set up is an effort to answer the question “is it stealing to take back what was stolen”?. These artefacts carry cultural weight artifacts like Benin Bronzes, Asante golden head, Yehoti Mask and myriads of artifacts they were forcefully taken. United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation(UNESCO) in its report in 2009 estimated that over 90% of Africa’s arts are held outside Africa.

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Relooted will feature around 70 artefacts to reclaim, of which form the debate on the ongoing restitution. These artifacts are real but the museums in which they were kept are imaginary, to make reference to future Western museums such as Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the British Museum in London. The CEO and creative director of Nyamakop, Ben Myres, in his revenge against Western countries description of Africa as “mud huts”, did in the video game referred Western countries as “Old World” that is stuffy, the CEO further said “We wanted to contrast the very violent way the artifacts were often taken. The way the artifacts are reclaimed is not through brute force and overpowering, but outsmarting the very same systems and institutions which took the artifacts.”

The video game intentionally created to reflect on the future identity of Africa, which is termed Africafuturism, with this Africa can be rightly place in the map, a continent with limited opportunities but massive talents and potential could be able to see what future holds for them from this point of view. The developers want to replicate the kind of success achieved with “Black Panther”. The video game is of highly significance, a lot of young people will be anticipating the whole aura surrounding Relooted, it also offers pathway to learn about African culture not only by Africans, but open invitation to embrace the culture, while the demo has been released, the launch date will be highly anticipated.