Ninja Theory announced Project: Mara today, though details on the title are sparse. In fact, we’re not even sure if it’ll be a game in the traditional sense or not given the cryptic description.
The announcement describes Project: Mara as a “real-world and grounded representation of mental terror.” Ninja Theory states it’s basing the experience on in-depth research of real-life accounts of…. something. The objective of Project: Mara is to recreate “the horrors of the mind” accurately and realistically. The title is said to be experimental, and Ninja Theory claims it’ll be a showcase of a possible new storytelling medium.
Project: Mara will be set in the real-world and center around Mara, and will be set in one location. While Hellblade 2 seems to be pulling the camera back and bringing Senua into the wider world, Project: Mara looks like it’ll be continuing in the tradition of the original game as a focused character study.
An accompanying video describes Ninja Theory’s approach to design. With the success of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, the studio intends to continue the philosophy behind the development of that game. Each of its three titles in development, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, Bleeding Edge, and Project: Mara, will use small teams of around 20 people. The studio is calling the approach “Dreadnought,” and intends to release regular development diaries to give insight behind the process.
We also got a small teaser for Project: Mara in the vlog, which seems to hint at Mara having some sort of mental health issue. Again, details are very sparse, but the environment shown may be a clinic. We can assume that the game will deal with Mara dealing with her issues, which are represented in the teaser by what looks like a corrupted mirror image lurking around her.
No release date or platform info has been released for Project: Mara. However, since Ninja Theory seems to have moved on to developing for next-gen consoles, we’ll likely see the game release on the upcoming Xbox Series X.
