Relooted

I have a special indie game for you today, chums, because Relooted is one cleverly exciting blend of genres that comes together wonderfully.

Relooted is a wonderful action heist adventure that provides a deep and poignant history lesson into the brutish acts of colonialism on the African continent and the plundering of cultural and religious property as spoils of war. Possessing great art direction, puzzle and level design, and cultural representation, the game suffers from a variety of glitches, disconnected voice direction, and frustrating wall-jumping mechanics that made it too hard to brush aside.

Relooted does the work of all great Afrofuturism: It asks us to dream of utopias while respecting and acknowledging the past, engaging with it with the gravitas and complexity it deserves. If we lived in a fair world, a better world, a kinder world, we would’ve already had a thousand games like Relooted, and maybe one of them would’ve adhered more closely to my stylistic and mechanical desires. As it stands, Relooted is worth playing on premise and intention alone, and in a media landscap...