Playing as a Nigerian hero: African lead characters in video games

For most of video game history, if you were African and wanted to see yourself on screen, you had a short list to choose from, and most of it was supporting cast. That list is longer now. It is still not long enough, but there are African heroes you can actually play, written with care, some of them by African and African-descended creators.

These are our picks of African lead and playable characters worth knowing. We have kept to facts we could check: the game, the year, where you can play it. The opinions are ours.

Doomfist (Overwatch)

The most famous Nigerian in video games is probably a villain. Akande Ogundimu, the Nigerian fighter from a family prosthetics business who takes the name Doomfist, joined Blizzard’s team shooter Overwatch as a playable hero in July 2017. He is charismatic, physical and very sure of himself: a fighter with an enormous gauntlet and a philosophy to match.

Why he matters: he is a Nigerian character at the centre of one of the best-known team shooters of the last decade, written as a leader rather than a sidekick. You can play him today in Overwatch 2, which is free to play on PC, PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch.

Sheva Alomar (Resident Evil 5)

Capcom’s 2009 horror shooter is set in Kijuju, a fictional region of West Africa, and Sheva Alomar, an African agent of an anti-bioterrorism group, is its co-lead beside Chris Redfield. In two-player co-op, one of you plays her. She is a capable, central character, and also a fair example of how a game can mishandle Africa: critics at the time argued that the game leaned on racial stereotypes in how it showed the continent and its people. Both things are true, and both are worth knowing.

Bayek of Siwa (Assassin’s Creed Origins)

Ubisoft’s 2017 open-world game puts you in Ptolemaic Egypt as Bayek, a Medjay from the oasis of Siwa, alongside his wife Aya. It is a huge open world set in Africa: you can cross Egypt on foot, on horseback, by camel, chariot or boat. In our view Bayek, grieving, angry and warm, is one of the best-written leads in the series. It is on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.

Zau (Tales of Kenzera: Zau)

Here is a game made from the inside. Tales of Kenzera: Zau, released by EA in April 2024, is the debut of Surgent Studios, founded by the actor Abubakar Salim, who was the voice of Bayek. You play Zau, a young shaman who must capture the spirits of three great beasts for Kalunga, the god of death, in the hope of bringing back his father. The game draws on Bantu cultures and myth, and it grew from Salim’s own grief after his father died. It won the BAFTA Games Award for Game Beyond Entertainment. It is a 2.5D action platformer on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch.

Enzo Kori-Odan (Aurion: Legacy of the Kori-Odan)

Made in Africa, for everyone. Aurion comes from Kiro’o Games, a studio in Yaoundé, Cameroon, and came out on Steam for PC in 2016. You play Enzo Kori-Odan, prince of Zama, in an action role-playing game on the planet Auriona, a world drawn from African cultures and mythology. It is a landmark for African game development, and still a good play.

AJ (AJ Cities)

And one from Lagos, which is ours, so read it in that light. In AJ Cities, a free open-world browser game set on the edge of Ajegunle, the lead is AJ.

AJ is not a soldier, a prince or a superhero. He was born in Lagos, taken to London as a boy, and grew up in south London without ever getting his papers straight. When a party was raided, he was the one who could not prove he had a right to be there, and he was put on a plane. Back in Lagos, a city he left at seven, he was thrown in a police cell where the men called him “oyinbo”, foreigner, for his accent. Two weeks later he is broke on the veranda bench of a face-me-I-face-you on June 12 Street, owing the gate police ₦2,500,000 before they will open the estate gate.

He is proud, quick and funny when things go badly, which is most of the time, and he keeps his word. We wrote him because the deportee coming “home” to a country that does not recognise him is a real Nigerian story that games have not told. Read AJ’s story, then play it in your browser. It is for adults (18+).

At a glance

What makes a good African hero

Looking at this list, the characters that work best have one thing in common: they come from somewhere specific. Not “Africa” as a backdrop, but Siwa, a Bantu myth, a family business in Nigeria, a street in Lagos. Specific places give a character a voice, a sense of humour and a reason to care. The new games coming out of Lagos and other African cities are, if anything, more specific still. That is the direction we hope the whole industry takes.

For more, see our pages on African games and African video games.

Is there a Nigerian character in Overwatch?

Yes. Doomfist, whose real name is Akande Ogundimu, is Nigerian. He joined Overwatch in July 2017 and is playable in the free-to-play Overwatch 2.

Which video games were made by African studios?

Aurion: Legacy of the Kori-Odan was made by Kiro’o Games in Cameroon. Nigerian studios such as Maliyo Games make phone games, and AJ Cities is a browser game set in Lagos.

Who is the main character in AJ Cities?

AJ, a man deported from London back to Lagos, who starts again in a rooming house on June 12 Street on the edge of Ajegunle.