It’s always fun to come across games that are truly unique, and I got to experience one of them at Summer Game Fest this week. Relooted, by Nyamakop, is a unique game where you play as Nomali, a woman dragged into working to reclaim stolen obtained artifacts from collectors or museums across the world.
The premise of the game is that due to the wording of a new law, any ancient artifacts that were on public display at museums would need to be returned to their country of origin. The loophole in this that these locations found though, was that if an item was only shown in private, then the artifacts no longer needed to be returned.
Accessory To A Heist
With knowledge of these artifacts, Nomali and her team, consisting of a group of people skilled in acrobatics and hacking, and more as the game progresses. With this team it is your goal to get into these locations, scope out the most ideal way to ‘reloot’ these items with intent to return them to their homes, and then get out as quickly as possible.
The gameplay loop is that you’ll start your mission outside, scope out the locations of the different artifacts within the building, and then plan the heist to recover as many items as possible. The game takes place from a sidescrolling view, you’ll run left to right through each location but you’ll also need to find ways to climb up to higher levels or return to the ground floor to obtain all of your items.
In the first level that I got to play, a private collector had two primary artifacts to collect, and a further two (one of which I missed, hidden in a safe). Reviewing the world was like looking at an equation where you have all of the pieces and you needed to get as close to the final answer as possible in order to succeed.
You could pre-emptively place your hackers by door, move desks into security doorways to keep them open, and have your acrobat in strategic places to get you to upper floors with ease. Once everything is in place it’s time to snag the first artifact, that kicks off the alarm, and starts the timer for you to get everything and get out.
From there the game is a mix of platforming and speedrunning and you maintain your line, pick up all of the artifacts and getting out. As you begin to get low on your escape timer a drone enemy will appear, with nothing to do to defend yourself you’ll have to just keep heading towards the exit.
Inspiration For Relooted
Speaking with Ben Myres, CEO at Nyamakop and Creative Director for Relooted he told me that the inspiration behind the game came from a trip that he took to London with his family. While he spent time meeting people in gamedev, his parents went to the British Museum. Once the family got back together he learned of how enraged his family had been about the entire front of a building that had been taken from somewhere in the world and placed in the museum.
From there it was suggested to make a game about returning these items that have been taken or ‘looted’ and while you can’t get away from a museum with a whole wall research was done into different artifacts that could be reclaimed.
Myres told me another story of the Ngadji Drum, important to the Pokomo people in Kenya. This sacred relic was thought to have been destroyed over 100 years ago turned up in the storage of the British Museum too.
Stepping away from the gam,e I was excited to have gotten my hands on such a unique game that consists of puzzle solving and speedrunning-like gameplay with such a unique story to tell.
Relooted was previewed by TechRaptor at Summer Game Fest.
