A new video game allows players to 'repatriate' African artefacts on display in Western museums.
Players of Relooted will plan and execute heists to bring 'home' 70 real-world objects, giving them a 'hopeful, utopian feeling'.
The game's protagonist, Nomali, is a South African sports scientist and parkour expert who navigates the museums to reclaim artefacts such as an Asante gold mask before bringing them back to Africa.
According to video game website IGDB.com Relooted players will 'reclaim real African artefacts from Western museums in this Africanfuturist heist game'.
They will also 'recruit crew members, plan escape routes, acquire the precious cargo, and bounce out of the joint as fast as you can'.
Ben Myres, chief executive of Nyamakop, which created Relooted, told The Guardian: 'Real-life repatriation is enormously complicated and it's been ongoing for decades, in some cases even a century or more...'
'We're giving people this hopeful, utopian feeling... of what it's going to feel like when all these artefacts finally come home.'
Mr Myres explained how the inspiration Relooted came from a trip his mother had taken to the British Museum, which left her outraged.
Relooted is aimed at young people with African hertiage living in the West
The aim of the game is to 'repatriate' artefacts from Africa which are currently on display in Western museums
The designer said his mother was left outraged after a trip in 2018 when she saw the Nereid Monument, a tomb which came from Turkey.
Speaking to the Telegraph, Mr Myers said: 'She was just shocked by the audacity of stealing a building and flippantly said: "You should make a game about this."'
Mr Myres also explained how he wanted to create a 'parody' of the West, with different regions labelled 'The Old World' and 'The Shiny Place'.
He said: 'We wanted to parody the way the West often represents Africa as a country; it's homogeneous, it's all the same, it's mud huts, it's poverty, it's crying children.'
The game developer said Nyamakop wanted to do the 'same thing' with Relooted in a 'tongue in cheek' way.
In the game, Europe is known as 'The Old World' and is portrayed generically, he said.
Meanwhile the US is called 'The Shiny Place' and is represented as a 'cross between Times Square and the Las Vegas strip'.
The game's release last week comes amid pressure on Western museums to return artefacts to their countries of origin.
The launch of Relooted comes amid growing pressure on museums in the West to return 'stolen' artefacts
The game mocks the West in the same way Relooted's designer Ben Myres says Africa is presented as 'mud huts' and 'poverty' - with the US represented by Times Square and the Las Vegas strip
Pictured: Benin bronzes from Nigeria, which are held at the British Museum
In 2018, a report commissioned by French president Emmanuel Macron found that 'over 90 per cent of the material cultural legacy of sub-Saharan Africa remains preserved and housed outside of the African continent'.
In December last year, the British museum sent treasures from its collection back to India in a bid to 'undo colonial misinterpretation'.
In total, 80 objects from ancient Greece and Egypt were transferred to Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya museum (CSMVS).
They have been displayed in a new gallery which aims to highlight India's contributions to civilisation.
Dr Nicholas Cullinan, director of the British Museum, hailed the move at the time as 'very beneficial', adding that museums should be engaging in cultural diplomacy.
The move came amid ongoing disputes over the return of other artefacts, such as sacred tablets from Ethiopia, the Elgin Marbles and the Benin Bronzes.
Museums such as the Horniman in London made a move to return the Benin Bronzes, which were primarily looted by British forces in 1897 from what is now Nigeria, after the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.