RELOOTED

Colonial crimes meet parkour in an ingenious heist caper

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Ben Myres, creative director at Johannesburg-based studio Nyamakop, was holidaying in London with his family a few years ago. One afternoon, his parents went to the British Museum. “We met up in the evening,” Myres says, “and my mother was furious.” At the museum, she had seen the Nereid Monument, an ancient tomb from what is now Turkey, that was stolen and brought to the UK brick by brick. “She was aghast at the scale of looting,” Myres says. “Stealing a building is wild. There’s that joke: why are the pyramids in Egypt? Because they were too heavy to take to the British Museum.”

Myres’ mother suggested this might make a good game. “I could never figure out how to make moving a building out of another building fun,” Myres says. But the idea did get him thinking about colonialism and looting, and his mind turned to the African artefacts in museums around Europe and the US. This became Relooted, a heist game in which players reclaim African artefacts, breaking into the museums and mansions where they’re kept. It’s an ingenious and righteously furious concept, and also a very neat one.