Mohale Mashigo Is Building New Worlds for African Stories

From books to playable worlds

Raised in Soweto, Mashigo first gained recognition as an author. Her debut novel, The Yearning, won the University of Johannesburg Debut Prize, while Intruders explored African speculative fiction. Her work later expanded into comics, including South African superhero series Kwezi and projects for Marvel and DC.

Across those shifts, storytelling has remained constant. Each new format, however, has required Mashigo to approach it differently. Literature gave her space to construct narratives through words; comics introduced a more visual and collaborative process, where writers, illustrators and other creatives have to build a world together.

Gaming takes that collaboration even further. The audience is no longer simply following the story, they have to participate in it.

Building through collaboration

That evolution comes together at Nyamakop, the South African game studio where Mashigo serves as Narrative Director. The studio’s latest title, Relooted, turns the restitution of African artefacts into the premise of a futuristic heist game.

Players form a crew to recover African objects held in Western institutions, with the fictional missions drawing from real histories, including artefacts such as the Benin Bronzes and the Bangwa Queen. Rather than using restitution as a loose aesthetic reference, the team researched the histories behind the objects and selected pieces that could carry meaning within the wider narrative.

It is an example of what Mashigo’s multidisciplinary career makes possible. Writing a game requires narrative to work alongside character design, environments, movement and gameplay. Her role is therefore less about placing a story on top of a game than helping create a world players want to explore.

When African history becomes interactive

Relooted has taken that approach to an international audience, attracting attention at A MAZE. / Berlin and through launches including Paris. With African history often encountered through books, documentaries, museums or institutional debates, Relooted creates a new space for these topics within gaming and entertainment.

Gaming gives this history a particularly rich creative space. Games bring together writing, visual design, music, performance and intellectual property, allowing stories to be experienced rather than simply told. Studios such as Nyamakop show how these disciplines can come together around African histories and experiences, while creating entertainment capable of reaching audiences globally.

Building beyond one medium

Mashigo’s career is a powerful example of how far African storytelling can travel when creators are willing to move across disciplines. From literature and comics to gaming, she has continued to find new forms for African characters, histories and ideas, building a body of work that expands both their creative possibilities and their reach.

With Relooted, this journey enters another space and Mashigo is helping build an African-led gaming world where history, imagination and play meet. She shows the breadth of what a career built around storytelling can become. It is precisely this kind of creative path that makes her a builder worth watching: one that keeps opening new spaces for African stories, and new possibilities for the people telling them.

Sources :

Arizona State University, Center for Science and the Imagination, “Griots & Galaxies: Mohale Mashigo”
The Johannesburg Review of Books, “Nthikeng Mohlele and Mohale Mashigo win the UJ Prizes for South African Writing”
NPR via VPM, “‘Relooted’ is a game about repatriating art”
A MAZE. / Berlin 2026, “Nominees and Honourable Mentions”
MansA × Narratify, “Relooted: The Video Game Challenging Museums”