Wicked Saints Studios, in partnership with Active Minds and Wellious, today launches the #ASKbetter challenge on its flagship platform World Reborn.
For World Mental Health Day, the gaming for good platform and national teen mental health non-profit, supported by Wellious, a clean plant-based protein company, are joining forces to give teens and young adults simple tools to normalize mental health conversations with their friends and family.
“We are proud to partner with Wicked Saints Studios for the #ASKbetter challenge on World Reborn,” said Kimberly Cooper, CMO at Active Minds, in a statement. “Opening up about mental health breaks down stigma, yet 70% of students say they don’t know how to help a friend. Active Minds brings our expertise in peer support to this collaboration with this gamified approach to teach participants A.S.K.—Acknowledge, Support, Keep in Touch. Together, we’re helping youth and young adults carry these practical skills into everyday conversations so more friends feel heard and supported.”
Together, Wicked Saints and Active Minds partnered to create the #ASKbetter challenge. Kobe Garner, VP of the Active Minds chapter at Albany State University, appears in World Reborn to guide players through the basics of Active Minds’ A.S.K. platform for peer mental health support. A.S.K. encourages young people to Acknowledge their friends’ feelings, Support them through tough times, and Keep in Touch to keep checking in.
“You never know what somebody’s going through, and the happiest person in the room can be the saddest person out,” said Garner, a student at HBCU Albany State. “If you don’t ask, you’ll never know. I try to ask and to be that supportive role. Cause shoot, I used to want that.”
Players join the #ASKbetter challenge by committing to support a friend or family member using A.S.K., creating an A.S.K. sign to remind them, and sharing their commitment to #ASKbetter among their social networks, encouraging more young people to join the challenge. Ultimately, the goal is to support young people to have authentic conversations about their mental health with friends and family.
“Wellious was born out of my own health struggles,” said Sean Hall, founder of Wellious. “And while we are dedicated to building a better food system, our ultimate mission is to build a healthier and happier world. We know that mental health is as important as any health, and we’re honored to support good causes like this.”
Backed by Riot Games, the Black, female-led Wicked Saints Studios is the brainchild of CEO Jessica Murrey, an Emmy-award winning storyteller and international peacebuilder, together with a behavioral science researcher and a former senior engineer at Pokémon GO. These three women teamed up to build games and experiences that employ behavioral technology to empower young people to build real-life skills and create real change.
World Reborn is their flagship activation platform, blending fantasy story gaming with real-world changemakers to challenge players with bite-sized real-world actions to improve their lives and communities. Designed to boost each person’s self-belief, the game is backed by behavioral science and positive psychology.
“We want young people to know that they are already strong,” said Murrey. “They already have unique strength that the world needs. Our game just helps reveal those strengths and how they can use them to better their reality.”
Since its launch in May 2026, World Reborn has already proven to activate its players to improve their lives and world. With over 50,000 installs, World Reborn maintains a 4.7 rating on the App Store. Players have written over 13,500 custom notes to hospitalized children for Starlight Children’s Foundation.
About 95% of players in the in-game survey (n=268) say the real-world training makes them ‘feel good’, with the top feelings being inspired (84%), happy (56%), and proud (54%). Overall, WR players have taken 46.5K real-world actions, such as 3.4K practicing engaging across dividing lines, 2.6K learning and sharing resources about stopping misinformation, 1.3K saving Crisis Text Line info to their phones, and 755 volunteering time with younger kids in the real world.
Previous mental health activation #CrisisAverted, powered by CrisisTextLine and Discord, has spurred positive feedback from players. Players have expressed that the game has built their confidence, helped them deal with mental health struggles, and encouraged them to believe in their power in a world that often feels out of control. One player privately reached out to the Wicked Saints team to share, “Hey world reborn. I wanted to say your game has helped me with a lot of my mental issues like suicide and other things happening in my life. Tbh I see myself as one of the characters in the game and it helps me. Just. Thank you so much for helping me.”
Despite some improvement since pandemic-level highs, one in three young people still feel persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, a trend that has worsened since 2015 according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (report). According to Active Minds’ own data, young people want to support their friends through these feelings, but 70% said they don’t know how.
Active Minds was founded by Alison Malmon when she was a junior at the University of Pennsylvania, following the suicide of her older brother Brian. At Penn, Malmon saw that no one was talking about mental health issues, although many were affected. One in five students lives with a mental health condition, but stigma and shame were preventing students from reaching out.
Malmon wanted young people to start talking about it, to combat the stigma of mental illness, encourage students who needed help to seek it early, and prevent future tragedies like the one that took her brother’s life. Active Minds now has over 500+ chapters in high schools and colleges across the country, where they encourage young people to become mental health advocates.