Ninja Theory endeavored to do more with Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice than tell a heroic story through Norse mythology. When it ultimately decided how the game's development would proceed, the team knew it wanted to create a broader understanding of how someone lives with psychosis, and they wanted to make it a AAA experience on an indie budget. So far, that seems to have worked out financially.

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice launched this past August. While being interviewed by GamesBeat, Ninja Theory Co-Founder and Chief Creative Ninja Tameem Antoniades indicated that the game's sales at this point have been above the developer's expectations.

"I think it’s almost broken even, or it’s about to break even in the next couple of weeks. I’d have to check. We weren’t expecting to break even for six, eight, nine months on this game. It looks like within three months, it will have broken even and then some."

Antoniades believes that this is largely due to the fact that Ninja Theory self-published Hellblade and it is an IP that the team owns itself. Antoniades believes this proves that the model for developing the title is a viable one that should be considered by other teams of a similar size to Ninja Theory.

"The triple-A publishing model goes in cycles, sort of, but it doesn’t really serve developers like us very well, mid-size developers. A lot of opportunity is out there for developers, but the triple-A model is a difficult one, a dangerous one [...] The only way you can counter that is find another way. This seems to have worked for us."

Although nothing specific regarding the game's sales have been provided at this point, Antoniades notes that data will soon be released to further explain how Hellblade has fared.

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is now available for PlayStation 4 and PC. For more information on the game, visit its official website.

Recently, the results of Ninja Theory's efforts to donate the proceeds of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice on World Mental Health Day were revealed to have had great success!

You can also find DualShockers' review of the PlayStation 4 version of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, which found it to be an intensely emotional and impactful window into mental illness.