Relooted
Top Critic Average
Critics Recommend
Critic Reviews for Relooted
Relooted makes you feel like you're a mastermind, and escaping is thrilling, but there are just enough problems that drag the experience down to the point you can't ignore them.
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 turns a fantastic premise into a fun heist game. Putting its weaknesses in writing and plot aside, repatriating African artifacts is fun, swift and captures the emotional spikes and troughs of the heist genre nicely. Relooted also never loses sight of why these artifacts should be repatriated, treating them not as empty collectibles but instead as a way to help players understand their cultural significance and why they should be returned.
Relooted's clever blend of gameplay elements as you plan, solve puzzles, and then execute via exciting parkour segments completely blew me away and it certainly stands tall as one of the most unique and rewarding indie games that you'll ever play. 🏺
Relooted is a game that mixes culture, speed And fun puzzles all together in a fun harmonious way, while some parts can take too long, it overall was a fun experience with replay value to it.
Review in Arabic | Read full review
Relooted isn't just a polemic. It is also a smartly designed and mostly hugely enjoyable game that has a clear love and understanding for this genre. For fans of side-scrolling action puzzlers it's an easy recommendation. Reminiscent of those great XBLA titles we used to get on the regular in the mid-2000s.
Relooted's premise is bold, necessary, and handled with genuine care by Nyamakop. The concept of repatriating real African artifacts through heist gameplay deserves celebration, and I want to be clear that my criticisms are aimed at execution, not concept. The Nu-Nu casing mechanics are engaging, the escape sequences deliver real thrills, and the Trevor/Nomali sibling dynamic feels authentically alive. However, the repetitive mission structure makes the game feel like an ongoing tutorial that never quite graduates to the main event, and technical issues like the 60 FPS lock, poor optimization, and inconsistent animation quality are hard to overlook. The reused sound effects and stilted in-game voice acting further detract from immersion. Relooted feels more like a promising extended demo than a polished final product, which is frustrating because the foundation (the movement, the casing, the artifacts themselves) deserves better. I respect what Nyamakop set out to do here, and I hope they get the chance to refine this concept, because there's something genuinely special buried underneath the technical roughness.
