Abandoned Development is a Mess, Report Claims

There is "no meaningful evidence" that development of Blue Box Game Studios' game Abandoned exists as a playable game according to a new report.


Published: June 3, 2022 2:29 PM /

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A new report claims that Abandoned development is plagued with problems, highlighting the continued lack of a playable prologue and behind-the-scenes chaos in a private Discord group that is claimed to be associated with Blue Box Game Studios.

Just over a year ago, a teaser trailer for Abandoned was revealed. It quickly sparked all sorts of rumors, including claims that it was secretly a Hideo Kojima game -- although those claims were largely based on circumstantial evidence. Now, a new report claims that a yearlong investigation has found little evidence that Abandoned has made any significant development progress.

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Report Raises Serious Questions About Abandoned Development

A yearlong investigation from GameSpot has concluded with claims that may seem unsurprising to the more skeptical folks out there: Abandoned development is a bit of a mess.

To recap, Abandoned was first revealed on April 7, 2021, in a PlayStation Blog post. It was billed as a "cinematic style, first-person story" that requires careful, tactical movement. That announcement also included a short announcement teaser.

The next step for the game was the launch of a PS5 app that would collect trailers and gameplay demos. That app was delayed and delayed again; it finally launched nearly two months later in mid-August 2021.

That launch of that app also included yet another mysterious teaser:

The most recent bit of substantial news since then was another teaser in the form of a hidden MP3 file on Blue Box Game Studios' website. It featured a voiceover where a narrator claimed that the Abandoned game demo was essentially an experiment created by AI. That's a bit of a curveball considering the substance of the initial announcement trailer and the "walking" teaser, but it nonetheless continued to drive discussion about the game.

In the time since then, we haven't heard much about the game; a statement from Blue Box Game Studios from late March 2022 denies that Abandoned development is canceled, and its most recent tweet is from early April, promising to show off development footage of the game.

Now that you're all caught up, we can finally dive into the meat of GameSpot's report. Simply put, it claims that there isn't much actual substance for the game based on a yearlong investigation.

"The lead developer on the project, Hasan Kahraman, has said Abandoned is exactly what he always said it was: an indie survival-horror about a lone survivor stuck in the woods with a cult. However, in the past year, onlookers have also seen it become a game about a rampant superintelligent AI. More recently, it was said to be a game about vampires. As it stands, there is no meaningful evidence that Abandoned exists in any real way--though there is a long trail of dubious business deals, uninspiring leaks, and a chatroom full of fans, including at least one child, where the game's lead developer has misled a captive audience for months."

The GameSpot report claims that Blue Box Game Studios has gone through several iterations of a private Discord group with handpicked superfans and enthusiasts. This group reportedly included lead developer Hasan Kahraman and he is claimed to have regularly interacted with the members. Kahraman seemed to have little patience with members questioning the status of Abandoned development, allegedly removing them from the group when they asked about updates on progress.

That Discord group is said to be the source of another round of leaks of various materials -- albeit with little context -- including screenshots, an image with a Silent Hill 5 logo, and a single page of a script on Reddit. Outside of those materials, though, we have yet to see any convincing evidence that Abandoned development is progressing.

So, what's actually going on? Based on the claims in this report and surrounding evidence, it seems that Blue Box Game Studios' Abandoned is lacking in direction or actual development. There's no evidence as to whether or not the game has actually settled on a premise, much less developed any gameplay beyond the most basic level (if at all). It's unclear what Abandoned is intended to be or if it even exists as an actual game at all, and we may never find out unless its developer decides to show the world something of substance.

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