Relic Ravage

Relic Ravage was created by GO! Bang for ROM Game Jam 2013

Travel through time in Relic Ravage! First, fight with up to three opponents as characters from the ancient past and from mythology. Then, travel forward in time to compete with fellow archaeologists to dig up as many artifacts as you can for your museum!

Relic Ravage was inspired by the science of archaeology and the way museum collections are created and continue to grow.  Archaeologists have a hard job, because anything that would have been useful or valuable to people in the past would have been kept safe with them.  This means that the artifacts that archaeologists find are usually garbage or have been left behind deliberately (such as in a burial).  As like today, important things are rarely dropped or lost by a person in the past -- we wouldn’t leave our smartphones or cars behind!  Archaeologists are interested in these types of objects since they show real, normal, daily life, but they are the rarest types of finds, since people don’t usually lose things in places where archaeologists dig.  

Today, artifacts found on archaeological digs are subject to very strict national and international regulations, meaning that discoveries generally remain in their country of discovery, often going on display at national museums.  However, earlier in the history of archaeology and museums, discoveries would generally be divided up amongst the archaeologists and their university or museum.

Much of the ROM’s art and archaeology collection was created by archaeologist Charles T. Curelly.  His archaeological and collecting work in Egypt, Nubia, and Asia Minor was instrumental in building what would later become the ROM’s collections.  

Today, the ROM funds many different archaeological excavations throughout the world, such as Senior Curator Chen Shen’s work in Northern China, looking at the earliest hominid occupations, as well as Curator Justin Jennings’ work in the Ancient Andes, or Senior Curator Krzysztof Grzymski’s work in Ancient Nubia.

At a ROM Game Jam, teams of developers spend a weekend at the ROM learning from collections and curators and using those ideas to build fun games inspired by the museum.  With only two days to research and create their games, the results can be weird, wacky, and downright wonderful!