Abandoned

Abandoned is an upcoming cinematic survival horror shooter from Blue Box Game Studios. The game follows Jason Longfield, who awakens stranded in a forest after being kidnapped for a ‘dark purpose’. Players must use realistic survival mechanics, tactical shooting, and stealth to navigate the environment, fight against a sinister cult led by Jason’s estranged brother, and ultimately decide his fate.

Abandoned: A Phantom in the Forest – The Unmaking of a PlayStation 5 Spectacle

In the annals of video game history, few titles have generated as much fervent speculation, conspiratorial intrigue, and ultimately, profound disappointment as Abandoned. It is a game that exists not as a piece of interactive software, but as a cultural artifact—a case study in hype, deception, and the desperate yearning for a beloved franchise’s return. This is the story of a game that was abandoned long before it could ever be played.

Introduction: The Teaser That Shook the World

On April 7, 2021, a post on the official PlayStation Blog introduced the world to Abandoned, a “cinematic survival sim” coming exclusively to the PlayStation 5. The post, written by a developer named Hasan Kahraman, promised a gritty, realistic first-person horror experience. The gaming press reported on it; fans took notice. But within hours, the conversation shifted from cautious curiosity to rampant, all-consuming speculation. Was this enigmatic project, from a virtually unknown Dutch studio called Blue Box Game Studios, actually a secret new Silent Hill game from the legendary Hideo Kojima? This question would define Abandoned‘s entire existence, transforming it from a potential indie gem into one of the most infamous vaporware sagas of the modern era.

Development History & Context: A Studio Built on Shifting Sand

To understand Abandoned, one must first understand Blue Box Game Studios. Founded by Hasan Kahraman in 2015, the studio’s history, as pieced together from various interviews and reports, is a graveyard of cancelled projects.

A Legacy of Unfulfilled Promises:
Prior to Abandoned, Blue Box’s track record was fraught with failure:
* Rewind: Voices of the Past: A paranormal investigation game that saw a cancelled Kickstarter before being shelved entirely.
* The Whisperer: A cancelled PC title that saw a brief, delisted free-to-play mobile release.
* Tales of the Six Swords: A mobile JRPG with a similarly short-lived presence.
* The Haunting: Blood Water Curse: A Fatal Frame-inspired horror game released into Early Access in 2020 before being pulled from stores due to poor reception. Kahraman later claimed development would be completed by an outside studio.

Kahraman explained these cancellations to IGN as a result of inexperience and a strategy of announcing projects to gauge interest, then cancelling them if the audience was too small. This established a pattern of over-promising and under-delivering long before Abandoned entered the picture.

The Gaming Landscape of 2021:
Abandoned was announced into a specific vacuum: the PlayStation 5 was new, and its library was still growing. More importantly, the haunting legacy of P.T.—the playable teaser for the cancelled Silent Hills—loomed large. For years, fans had been desperate for any sign of a revival. This yearning created the perfect conditions for a mystery to flourish. The technological promise of the PS5—4K, 60fps, DualSense haptics, 3D audio—was used as a selling point for a game that had no tangible evidence of existing beyond a concept.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive: The Story That Never Was

According to the initial PlayStation Blog post and subsequent interviews, Abandoned was to follow Jason Longfield, a man who wakes up in a forest with no memory of how he got there. He discovers he was kidnapped for a “dark purpose” and must fight his way out, confronting a cult led by his estranged older brother. The narrative promised a choice at the end: join the cult or fight against it.

An Unfinished Script:
Leaked assets and scripts in May 2022, reported by outlets like GameSpot and TheGamer, revealed a project in profound disarray. The concept had allegedly shifted wildly during development, morphing from the initial cult story into plots involving rogue AIs and vampires—a far cry from the grounded, realistic horror initially promised. One source described a version of the game as a Resident Evil clone. The leaked script was mocked online for its amateurish quality. The promised deep, cinematic narrative was, like everything else, a phantom.

Thematic Analysis: A Meta-Narrative of Deception:
Ironically, the only compelling narrative to emerge from Abandoned was its own meta-story. The game became a real-world horror story about deception, toxic fandom, and the perils of internet conspiracy theories. The themes of being lost, confused, and manipulated in Abandoned‘s proposed plot mirrored the experience of the fans who followed its development, lost in a forest of lies and blurred images, searching for a truth that wasn’t there.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems: The Ghost in the Machine

Kahraman’s descriptions of gameplay were consistently ambitious, focusing on “realism.”
* Tactical Combat: Promises of a slow, methodical shooter where every shot must be planned. Sprinting would exhaust the character and reduce aim accuracy.
* Realistic Interactions: Manual ammo checks, a complete lack of HUD, and using the DualSense controller to feel the difference between pulling a loaded and unloaded trigger.
* Motion Capture: Claims that motion capture would be used to determine how the protagonist takes damage.

However, these mechanics existed solely in press releases and interviews. The closest anyone got to “gameplay” was the Abandoned: Realtime Experience app, released on the PS5 store in August 2021 after multiple delays. This bizarre application, touted as a hub for interactive trailers, was a catastrophic failure. Upon launch, it was buggy and largely unusable. After a patch, it contained a single five-second clip of a man walking on a wooden floor—a clip that had already been posted on Twitter days prior. The app, a 5GB download for a few seconds of footage, became a symbol of the project’s emptiness. It was a UI with no system behind it, a trailer with no game.

World-Building, Art & Sound: The Asset Flip Heard Round the World

The initial announcement trailer featured moody shots of a winter forest, an abandoned building with “Kill the Trespasser” graffiti, and a sign reading “God’s town.” It was effective enough to fuel the conspiracy fires.

However, investigative gamers quickly discovered that the trailer was almost entirely an asset flip. The footage was composed of pre-made assets purchased from the Unreal Engine Marketplace for an estimated $100. It was reported that the trailer could have been assembled in under an hour. This revelation shattered the illusion of a high-fidelity PS5 exclusive and revealed a project built on a foundation of borrowed, not crafted, elements.

The sound design was equally nebulous. A composer, Chris Schierbock, came forward stating he had spent 50-60 hours creating music for the game but had never seen it, heard back from Blue Box, or been paid. The auditory landscape of Abandoned was as silent as its development progress.

Reception & Legacy: From Hype to Harassment to Hoax

Initial Reception and The Conspiracy:
The immediate reaction was a whirlwind of excitement and skepticism. The “Blue Box Conspiracy” or “Kojima Conspiracy” exploded on Reddit and Twitter. Fans dissected every tweet, noting that “Hasan Kahraman” translated to “handsome hero” in Turkish, just as “Hideo Kojima” did in Japanese. A tweet from Blue Box reading “Guess the name: Abandoned = (First letter S, Last letter L)” sent the community into a frenzy, seemingly confirming it was Silent Hill. Though quickly deleted and apologized for, the damage was done.

The Shift to Negativity:
As delays mounted and the Realtime Experience app proved to be a farce, the narrative shifted. Media outlets began openly questioning the project’s validity. The hype curdled into frustration and then into anger.

Toxic Fallout and Harassment:
The situation turned truly dark in October 2021, when Blue Box claimed its staff were receiving death threats and doxxing from angry fans. While harassment is never justified, it highlighted the toxic vortex of emotion the failed marketing stunt had created.

The Final Nail: The GameSpot Investigation:
In June 2022, GameSpot published a damning investigative report. Sources close to Kahraman alleged:
* The game was on hold due to a lack of funding.
* There was “no meaningful evidence that Abandoned exists in any real way.”
* Kahraman ran a toxic private chatroom, sharing scant development info while making romantic advances on a member and soliciting business deals.
* He exhibited erratic behavior, paranoia, and requested fans sign unprofessional NDAs.
* The studio’s size was wildly inflated; Dutch Chamber of Commerce records listed only 10 employees, not the 50+ claimed.

This report cemented Abandoned‘s status as a potential scam or, at best, the product of a profoundly misguided and incompetent developer. Hideo Kojima himself finally addressed the rumours on his podcast in November 2022, calling them a “nuisance” and confirming he had never met Kahraman.

Enduring Legacy:
Abandoned‘s legacy is twofold:
1. A Cautionary Tale: It serves as the ultimate warning against pre-release hype and the dangers of fan-driven conspiracy theories. It is frequently compared to The Day Before as a textbook example of vaporware and deceptive marketing.
2. A Cultural Touchstone: Despite everything, it remains a fascinating chapter in gaming history. It demonstrated the potent, almost desperate desire for a Silent Hill revival and how easily that desire can be manipulated. The name “Abandoned” is now ironically perfect—it is a game abandoned by its creators, by its audience, and by reality itself.

Conclusion: The Verdict on a Phantom

Abandoned is not a game that failed. To fail, it would have had to exist in the first place. It is a spectacle of absence, a masterpiece of marketing over substance that captivated and then betrayed a community. There is no gameplay to critique, no narrative to analyze, no world to explore. There is only a trail of broken promises, deleted tweets, and a bizarre PS5 app containing a few seconds of footage.

Its place in history is secure not as a title to be remembered for its artistic merit, but as a historical curiosity—a digital ghost story from the early days of the PS5. It is a definitive lesson that in the age of hype, a compelling mystery can sometimes be more powerful, and more damaging, than any game could ever be. The final, definitive verdict is that Abandoned is the most reviewed game that never was, a hollow monument to what happens when ambition is divorced from talent, and mystery is used to mask a void.