Strange things are happening to a strange game – Abandoned, the survival horror shooter indie studio Blue Box Game first announced in 2021 and initially planned to release that same year, is suddenly back on the PlayStation store after the PS5-exclusive was previously taken down, and then added back, and taken down, and…
Some people think of Abandoned as “The Survival Horror Game That Never Existed,” because, well, it doesn’t exist. Blue Box delayed the game indefinitely in 2022, saying, “We will continue to work on the game and we will notify you when we are ready.” That hasn’t happened yet. So, while the game’s latest PlayStation store listing carries what should be an intriguing 2027 release window, its game description is still too sparse to inspire new confidence: “Abandoned is a horror survival shooter with the focus on realism.”
All Abandoned is really doing by returning to the PlayStation Store is confirming it was not a shared delusion. I can’t go any further than that and say it’s becoming The Survival Horror Game That May Exist, since the game’s history is already defined by so much conspiracy and controversy.
Many people were convinced in 2021 that Abandoned was secretly a Hideo Kojima project, thinking the gray woods and sparse trees that show up in its announcement teaser would fit into a Silent Hill revival by way of Metal Gear, iron-colored realism. Remember, “Abandoned is a horror survival shooter with the focus on realism.”
Other theorists in the half-joking subreddit r/TheBlueBoxConspiracy decided Blue Box itself was actually a Death Stranding reference since both Kojima Productions and Blue Box are indie studios, and Death Stranding protagonist Sam sometimes heaves blue boxes, and, one time, Sam dropped a box of oranges (orange box), and the complementary color for an orange box would be a blue box.
“This takes us straight to the Blue Box Studios, the game studios that is widely considered to be just a cover for Kojima’s next big project,” decides one tin-foil hat owner. “Does it sound crazy? Yeah, maybe. But the sudden Box/Box connection and the Orange/Blue as opposite colors may be too much for a coincidence while talking about such a suspicious topic.”
Unfortunately, Blue Box outright denied the connection, and it took a while, but people finally internalized it. That’s around when Abandoned started to seem truly… abandoned. Its playable Prologue never materialized. Blue Box stopped using social media, and now its YouTube page doesn’t even display Abandoned’s existing trailers. People started calling the game a scam, with one Reddit comment from four years ago saying, “It’s unbelievable that so many people thought this was Kojima just a year ago. […]
“The alternative was simply thinking the game was vaporware and/or a scam. And sure enough that’s exactly what it was in the end.”
So, I don’t think Abandoned’s vague, new 2027 release window is enough to change this perception. But it’s something.