Reimagining African History Through Games
By Kaseystarr | Esports Africa News Nigeria
You know you’re at a tech-savvy event when people casually mention building a museum inside a game. Welcome to the wild imagination of Michael Oscar, founder African comicade. Pioneering the Echoes Games Jam where culture meets code, and tradition gets a digital glow-up.
The Echoes Game Jam is a cultural mashup curated by the Goethe-Institut, in collaboration with the National Commission for Museums and Monuments, Games College Africa, a network of researchers, storytellers, and digital dreamers across the continent.
What Is the Echoes Game Jam?
You likely want to know? Think of it as an African Avengers-style team-up, but for game developers. The Echoes Game Jam is part of the Dreaming New Worlds program, which challenges creators to reimagine African heritage for the modern world. Over two weeks, developers, writers, artists, and researchers from all corners of Africa joined forces to build digital experiences for museums.
Yes, you heard right: video games for museums!
Museums, But Gamified
Gone are the days when museum tours felt like walking through history class in slow motion. This initiative is turning artifacts into adventures. The aim is to preserve African culture, present it in exciting, youth-friendly formats, and make museum visits less “meh” and more “wow!”
And guess what? Some of the game jam participants traveled all the way to Lagos to showcase their work in person!
Let’s roll call the digital warriors behind this creative crusade:
- Joshua from Ethiopia helped bring Queen Idia to life, a game that revives the legendary Benin warrior queen in all her regal glory.
- Vania, part of the same team, brought the art and animation magic.
- Jimmy J from Nigeria showcased Rivets, an AR (Augmented Reality) game that quite literally brings culture off the screen and into your living room.
- Bernard from Tanzania teamed up on Cradle, a mind-blowing mixed reality experience designed to make you feel like you’re time-traveling inside a museum.
- And then there’s Miriam, one of the creative thinkers making sure the games speak the language of today’s youth while honoring the wisdom of the past.
Fun Facts.
This isn’t just about pixels and polygons. It’s digital storytelling, African game development, and creating immersive cultural preservation tools. These games aren’t just fun, they’re meaningful. They’re rewriting the way we teach, learn, and experience African heritage.
And let’s be honest, if Queen Idia herself could see what these devs are doing, she’d probably raise an eyebrow, nod approvingly, and say, “Now that’s royal behavior.”
What can we grasp in all of this you say, It’s that African heritage isn’t stuck in the past. It’s charging into the future joystick in hand. If you weren’t at Lagos Games Week this year, start making travel plans. You don’t want to miss the next cultural renaissance brought to you by Goethe.
