Ninja Theory announce Project: Mara, a "representation of mental terror"

By Heidi Nicholas,

The Ninja Theory name is becoming synonymous with their aims of portraying mental illness and promoting mental wellbeing. Hellblade was highly praised for its determination to depict mental illness, and, since then, Ninja Theory have announced The Insight Project; a project aimed at promoting mental wellbeing through creating gaming experiences in which players can recognise mental health issues and learn to understand and respond to them. Now, Ninja Theory have announced Project: Mara: a new and still in-development experimental project which aims to present "a real-world and grounded representation of mental terror".

The Insight Project will combine game design and neuroscience, will "adhere to strict standards of ethics and data management", and will be "underpinned by rigorous scientific principles". Like Hellblade before it, it will be a collaboration with Paul Fletcher, a Psychiatrist and Professor of Health Neuroscience at University of Cambridge. The idea for Hellblade bloomed from Ninja Theory Co-Founder Tameen Antoniades's desire to understand mental illness, after a friend suffered a mental breakdown and Antoniades wanted to learn about the experience. The idea to depict mental illness through a medium which would let others see it the same way led to Hellblade. The Insight Project, meanwhile, builds beyond portraying mental illness, to helping people, through gaming experiences, recognise, understand, and respond to their own mental health experiences with emotions like fear or anxiety. The Insight Project has a clear goal: "It is an exploratory but experimentally guided project that aims to deliver a mainstream solution to help treat mental suffering and encourage mental well being". As yet, it's unclear exactly how Project: Mara will fit into this, as all we know so far is that it will "be a real-world and grounded representation of mental terror... Based on real lived experience accounts and in-depth research". Ninja Theory say their aim "is to recreate the horrors of the mind as accurately and realistically as possible", but we'll have to wait for more details from the developers before we know for sure what their end goal is in creating these experiences.

Project: Mara will, says Antoniades, have only one character and one location. He says it's an experimental project, intended to be a showcase for what he hopes will become a new medium for storytelling. Commercial Director Dom Matthews comments on how being an Xbox Game Studio "puts [them] in a privileged position" and that they are enthusiastic, now that they're about to launch Bleeding Edge, about designing and launching their own projects. We'll keep you updated when we learn more.

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Written by Heidi Nicholas

Heidi tends to lean towards indie games, RPGs, and open-world games on Xbox, and when not playing Disney Dreamlight Valley, happily installs every new wholesome game that appears on Xbox Game Pass, before diving back into favorites like The Witcher 3. She's looking forward to Age of Mythology Retold, Everwild, Fable, and Avowed on the Xbox horizon. Heidi graduated with an MA in English Literature before joining the TrueAchievements team.