New video game sees Africans fantasise about taking back looted treasures

Imagine it is 2099 and the Transatlantic Returns Treaty is falling apart as Western museums find ways to wriggle out of promises to return stolen African treasures. Fed up with the trickery, artefacts expert Prof Grace decides to take matters into her own hands. And the South African knows the perfect people to help: her grandchildren, Nomali and Trevor and her former student Etienne.

In an abandoned warehouse in Johannesburg, Prof Grace sets out her high-stakes plan – to break into museums and private collections and take back artefacts mostly plundered during colonial times. None of this is real – rather it is the narrative of Relooted, what its creators call an “African-futurist heist game”, released on Tuesday. But it’s a heist story with a difference – there’s no big pay day at the end of the heist and the characters don’t have a criminal background.

The latest amendment to the Transatlantic Returns Treaty means only artefacts on public display have to be returned – and Western museums are now busy wrapping up objects and putting them into storage. Sports scientist Nomali is the mastermind – and the character through which the game is played, helped by colleagues from across the continent. “Nomali reluctantly agrees to the first heist to prove how dangerous the whole thing is,” the game’s narrative director Mohale Mashigo told the BBC. “She would do anything for her family – and she joins them as a way to protect them from themselves and the real danger that is involved in heists.”