Ninja Theory’s experimental horror game Project Mara has been cancelled, studio head says

Ninja Theory’s experimental horror game Project Mara is no longer in development, the studio head has confirmed.

Back in 2020, the Hellblade studio announced that Project Mara would be “a real-world and grounded representation of mental terror”, with a developer diary in 2021 confirming that the entire game would be set in a photorealistic apartment.

Little of Project Mara has been seen since then, and in an interview on the official Xbox Wire blog to promote the upcoming Senua, studio head Dom Matthews has now confirmed that it’s been scrapped.

When asked about the third game’s heavier focus on action, and whether this was a call back to the studio’s roots, Matthews replied: “I think about it slightly differently. It’s not a combat-action game – people shouldn’t expect that this is like two-thirds combat. We’re really thinking about it as being a fairly even split between combat, traversal, and puzzle solving.

“The way I think about it is really about studio potential, looking at our expertise and allowing the team to go and do their best work in this game – and so much of that experience comes from the likes of DmC, Enslaved, and Heavenly Sword as well as the Hellblades.”

Matthews then explained that the entire studio is working on the third game, rather than a smaller team as with the previous two Hellblade titles, and that as a result Project Mara is no longer in development.

“We had smaller teams working on the last two Hellblade games – Hellblade 1 in particular was a team of about 25 people. So this is about taking those 85 people that we have now, which is still a comparatively small team, and building out that experience.

“We can do more with combat, more with traversal, more with puzzles, and blend all of that gameplay into one. We have that opportunity with all of the talent now available to do so.

“And with the fact that we have the entire team working on this game, I suspect some people might ask what’s happened to Project Mara [a previously announced horror title] – I took the decision to not work on that any further.

“These decisions are never easy, but I did so to take the opportunity to have all of the talent and expertise in the studio, all 85 creatives, working together to realize the potential of what Senua can be.”

Set for release in 2027, Senua – the third game in the Hellblade series – has the titular protagonist “trapped between life and death in a fractured vision of purgatory”, according to its official description.

“She must fight to reach the afterlife and reunite with those she loved and lost, battling forces that threaten everything she believes in.”