Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is a 2017 action-adventure game developed and published by the British video game development studio Ninja Theory. Set in a dark fantasy world inspired by Norse mythology and Celtic culture, the game follows Senua, a Pict warrior who must make her way to Helheim by defeating otherworldly entities and facing their challenges, in order to rescue the soul of her dead lover from the goddess Hela. It was released worldwide for PlayStation 4, and Windows in August 2017, Xbox One in April 2018, Nintendo Switch in April 2019, and Xbox Series X and Series S in August 2021. Hellblade features support for virtual reality, which was added in a 2018 update. Wikipedia
Research exclusive to this game
Austin, Jodie. “The hardest battles are fought in the mind”: Representations of Mental Illness in Ninja Theory’s Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice.” Game Studies 21, no. 4 (2021).
Ferchaud, Arienne, Jonmichael Seibert, Nicholas Sellers, and Nivia Escobar Salazar. “Reducing mental health stigma through identification with video game avatars with mental illness.” Frontiers in psychology (2020): 2240.
Fordham, Joseph, and Christopher Ball. “Framing mental health within digital games: an exploratory case study of Hellblade.” JMIR mental health 6, no. 4 (2019): e12432.
Meakin, Eoghain, Brian Vaughan, and Charlie Cullen. ““Understanding” Narrative; Applying Poetics to Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice.” Game Studies 21, no. 2 (2021).
Research that includes this game in its sample
Anderson, Sky LaRell. “Portraying mental illness in video games: exploratory case studies for improving interactive depictions.” Loading 13, no. 21 (2020): 20-33.
Lavrador, Ema, Luís Teixeira, and Sahra Kunz. “Motion Capture as a Tool of Empowerment for Female Main Characters.” In International Conference on ArtsIT, Interactivity and Game Creation, pp. 504-514. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland, 2022.