Indiana Jones once famously declared that objects of public importance and history belong in a museum, but what do you do when they don’t? In the case of Relooted, you can put Indy’s mentality to the test by reclaiming relics of sub-Saharan Africa back for their homelands in this sleek and fascinating 2D heist title.
Relooted puts the player in control of a team of Robin Hood-like thieves that have dedicated their talents to the cause of reuniting items of cultural significance with their home countries. The group gets together upon discovering that a museum is hiding their ownership of multiple antiques in a vault, not even providing a reasoning of public education, but opening them up to having nowhere to report a theft.
“Ironically, this idea started when my mother visited the British Museum,” states Nyamakop Creative Director Ben Myres. “We met up later and she was wild with rage talking about this one element where the whole front of a temple from the south of Turkey was literally moved to the museum. She said, ‘You should make this into a game.’”
Myres thought about the mechanics of stealing a building from a museum and work on Relooted began. A year after, Marvel’s Black Panther released in theaters, and provoked a conversation about the idea of reclaiming a country’s history from elsewhere through less official means.
Nyamakop brought on full-time researchers and 3D modelers for all of the very real artifacts in the game that had been stolen from Africa. The developers wanted to ensure that Relooted uses only real-world examples of items countries have been trying to reclaim.
“We were never worried about not having enough relices,” Myres explains, “but rather which ones are we not going to be able to fit in?”
In the demo that I played, the group hatches a plan to visit the “House of Horrors,” a mansion that contains the body of Ethiopian Prince Alemayehu, who died while in England 150 years ago and has never been returned home. After a briefing at the base, it is explained that the priority is getting the remains out of the mansion and grabbing some optional items on the way out. This is where the planning aspect of Relooted begins.
Each level is a series of different rooms that have their own entrances and exits and potential hazards to blocking your way out, like shutters that threaten to close as soon as the alarm goes out. Before the heist begins, players decide where and how the team should be distributed: should you put the acrobat with the hookshot on the roof to aid you in rappelling down? In theory, the hacker locksmith should go where you suspect a security door will close, right?
There are indeed wrong choices, but there could also be off-the-wall decisions that may facilitate the retreat in ways not explicitly intended.
Once the player grabs one of the artifacts, the alarm goes off and the escape begins, surfacing a timer in which you can get the other items and get to the getaway vehicle at the far end of the stage. Here is where all your planning comes to fruition; if the player put items under the shutters, there should still be a gap to free-run under them. That is, of course, assuming you placed items that your character can move through. A safe is a big, bulky item but it does not do much good if it is still closed and locked.
The level ends as the player makes their way into the van, with promises of many more capers to come. The story promises to expand with not only interesting new heists, but BioWare-style choices along the way to shape the story. I came away from Relooted feeling like it is one of the freshest, most interesting games at Summer Games Fest and I cannot wait to play the full title.
