Relooted hands-on preview — Heist, heist baby

There are always a bevy of indie games that end up at Summer Game Fest, but you only have so many hours in the day to check them out. Relooted is one of them, a cool little parkour game that many might overlook at first glance. After a bit of time with it, however, there’s a neat concept present that could shape into something really fun.

It all starts with a treaty. In this futuristic society, a deal is struck to return African artifacts to their rightful owners. Of course, everyone agrees that this is the best course of action… until it’s time to send them back. Museums begin to pull everything off their walls and shelves for "maintenance and repair”. Using this guise, they begin exhibiting things privately in order to circumvent the terms of the previous agreement.

That’s where you come in. Nomali is a parkour savant, and her brother recruits her to help in “liberating” these artifacts from their vaults. After all, the museums won’t be reporting losses for items they shouldn’t actually have at this point, right? With the help of several other crew members, you’ll embark on heists to take back what’s been stolen, and it’s more intricate than you might expect.

I’d initially thought Relooted was simply a 2.5D puzzle platformer. Once I made my way through the tutorial, I found myself taken aback by its complexity. There is certainly more to Relooted than meets the eye, with steps needing to be taken in order to pull off your heists. You’ll assemble your crew at the hideout and figure out your mission, along with details of what you’re grabbing, the location, and more.

Once you’ve started the mission, you get a quick look at the layout from the view of Nomali’s hoverbot. Highlighting areas of interest, you’ll get a look at the main artifact you’re there to take, along with some secondary ones. You’ll also need to plan where your crew members need to be at, placing them at different positions to unlock doors or provide you with a grapple or a hand in getting across or up to another floor. It’s important to get these things right, because if Nomali’s flow is off, it can lead to you getting caught.

This is because once you touch an artifact, an alarm is triggered. Setting up the flow of your exit is paramount to getting out in one piece, especially as doors begin to close permanently. Routes you’d hope to take also may not be available if you haven’t moved a table or placed a friend in the right location. It’s almost like a Rube Goldberg machine: if you get it all right, the payoff is incredibly satisfying. I’m really surprised at the amount of layers here, making this as much a puzzle game as it is a heist-parkour one.

As soon as you grab your target, your plan can fall into motion. While I can’t say I did everything perfectly, I did manage to snatch two artifacts on my way out. I didn’t make it out without injury as another hoverbot was on my tail and shooting at me, but I got out alive. My only qualm is wishing I had more time to plan everything out; I’d only just started to understand what the game was doing by the time my session was over.

Relooted feels like it’s aiming for an undiscovered niche, and with a concept that’s fresh. It may take a second for players to acclimate to the style Nyamakop is going for, but once they figure it out, there will be some fun clips online of players finding the best ways to solve these heist-y puzzles. I for one look forward to figuring out more when Relooted is available. It doesn’t have a release window just yet, but will be arriving on PC (you can wishlist it on Steam here) and Xbox Series consoles when it does.