Rescue African artifacts from colonizers’ museums in the heist game Relooted

Overwhelmed is a turning game on the recovery of African artefacts from Western countries that have stolen them, developed by an independent South African studio Nyamakop. Overwhelmed Tops in a future calendar where Western nations have signed a treaty to return articles looted to their regions of African origin, but things cannot plan. Western leaders rather hide the artefacts in private collections, so it is a Ragtag team based in Johannesburg, South Africa, to develop and steal them.

Overwhelmed is divided into missions, and everyone includes a briefing on the artifact, an infiltration planning stage and robbery. The gameplay is a mixture of puzzle and action when you drive each building, configure your race, then run the plan. Once you have caught your target artefact, safety alarms are triggered and you have a limited time to escape, so in -depth preparation is essential.

In the Developer day reveal a video for OverwhelmedThe producer Sith Ncube cites a wild statistic of a 2018 Pivot Report On the African cultural heritage, saying: “90% of the heritage of sub -Saharan African culture is in possession of Western collections. It is millions and millions of deeply important cultural, spiritual and personal artifacts, including human remains, which are not in their legitimate place.”

Locations in Overwhelmed are fictitious, but the 70 artefacts you need to fly are real, and they are all currently in western and private collections, far from their original houses and owners.

Nyamakop is one of the largest independent game studios in sub -Saharan Africa, with around 30 developers working on Overwhelmed right away. His previous game, the globular platform game Semblancewas the first IP developed in Africa to come to a Nintendo console, hitting the switch in 2018. In order to obtain Semblance On the Switch, the co-founder of Nyamakop, Ben Myres, had to make his way around the world, buy one-way tickets and find new partners on the fly in a chain of game festivals. Here’s how Myres explained it at Engadget at E3 2018::

“The entrance curve to be an independent game developer in South Africa is like a cliff. Because you don’t have contacts, platform holders like Xbox, Sony. Capable of doing it.”

Nyamakop has increased considerably since 2018 and Overwhelmed is an African shameless game built by a majority-poc team, said Myres and Ncube in 2024.

“There is the thing to make games for Africans – we say a lot,” said Ncube Gamesindustry.biz. “We say that should be one thing, we should play games for Africans because we play games that have been made in the West. But people will even play these games, if you do them? And then if you make games targeting people … Even if you have to make one who is really good, there is no guarantee that you will have a lot of people.

Overwhelmed is in development for SteamTHE Epic game store And X / SBOX X / S seriesAnd although it does not yet have a firm release date, it is available for Wishlist.

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