A new video game developed in South Africa allows players to embark on a mission to reclaim culturally significant artifacts currently held in museums across Europe and North America. The game positions players as a skilled athlete navigating elaborate heists to retrieve dozens of historically looted items.
The narrative follows a protagonist assembling a team from across the African continent to recover objects such as a royal gold mask taken during a 19th-century British military campaign and the skull of an executed Tanzanian leader removed to Germany. These items are among hundreds of thousands of cultural and spiritual artifacts estimated to have been taken from Africa during the colonial era, with a significant majority of the continent’s material heritage believed to reside in foreign institutions.
While some museums have begun repatriating certain artifacts, the process remains complex and protracted. The game’s creators describe their work as offering a hopeful, imaginative vision of restitution. “We’re giving people this hopeful, utopian feeling of what it will be like when these artifacts finally come home,” said one of the developers.
The project was inspired by personal experience, with a developer citing a family member’s reaction to seeing a monumental ancient tomb displayed far from its origin. The development team itself drew talent from over ten African nations, with a focus on authentic regional voices for the characters.
The game’s narrative director crafted a forward-looking, optimistic vision of Africa at the close of the 21st century, a concept she distinguishes from more speculative genres. In contrast, Western settings are presented in a deliberately generic, almost satirical manner. “We wanted to parody the way the West represents Africa,” explained a lead developer.
For the team, including specific artifacts was deeply personal. One producer highlighted the inclusion of a several-hundred-thousand-year-old fossil discovered in her home country, which remains in a European natural history museum. The development process was an education, revealing the staggering scale of historical looting that the team found both shocking and likely understated.
The game concludes its missions not at the museums, but at a symbolic, empty hall in a West African cultural institution, awaiting the objects’ final journey home.
