Relooted has been a big surprise for me. Trailers for the game seemed to advertise the sidescroller as a parkour-driven platformer game, but after playing it, I realized that it’s first and foremost a heist game. While nabbing your prize and skillfully maneuvering through obstacles to reach the goal as fast as possible is a core part of the gameplay loop, the far more important component is the actual planning and setup stage that occurs beforehand, where you take on the role of a crew’s mastermind and plan out every step of the heist.
Set at the end of the 21st century, Relooted sees you play as Nomali, who puts her intelligence and acrobatic prowess to good use when she gets roped into heading up a crew of everyday citizens turned thieves. The crew plans on breaking into museums and mansions across the West to steal back the African artifacts locked away in vaults. Not for personal gain, of course, but to return them to where they rightfully belong.
Each mission begins with you mapping out the target, identifying which doors will lock when the alarms sound, which windows you can break through, where a zipline can be placed, and other aspects of the heist. During this planning stage, you can move certain objects too, like tables that can be placed to keep a door from fully closing, or put into a spot to act as a vault to reach otherwise unreachable ledges. Once you take the artifact, the alarms will sound and you’ll have only a few seconds to make your getaway. Your job is to prepare enough so that the parkour challenge in front of you is quick and doable, and most missions don’t have a singular solution.
