Innovation

What if restitution was not just something you read about on the news, or heard debated in museums, but a heist you could volunteer to join? Relooted is a locally made PC and Xbox game that begins when diplomacy fails. A treaty meant to send African artefacts back to their home countries is undermined, museums start pulling treasures off display and a high-tech crew of scientists, computer programmers and MMA fighters join forces to return what’s rightfully theirs.

Ben Myres is the CEO and creative director of Nyamakop, one of the largest game studios in Sub-Saharan Africa. The idea for Relooted came from his mother. “As all good stories should be,” he laughs. In 2017, they were on a family trip to the UK and while his parents were exploring the British Museum, Myres went to a game design meetup. But later that evening, when they got back together, Myres’ mother was infuriated. At the museum, she’d seen the Nereid Monument, an ancient Greek temple from the city of Xanthos in Lycia. “It used to be in the south of Turkey, but it was moved, brick by brick, into the British Museum,” he says. “She was taken aback by the audacity of stealing a building and flippantly said, ‘You should make this into a game’.” At the time, Myres was the only person working at Nyamakop, but the idea of an African futurist heist game about reclaiming artefacts stuck with him. Whenever he pitched or spoke about the concept, the idea resonated with people, and he realised there was an opportunity to make an African-inspired game – but at a high production level. “You don’t get to see African stories told in games very often,” he says.