Don't call it a comeback just yet, but it appears that developer Blue Box Game Studios' PS5-exclusive, first-person horror shooter Abandoned may not have been abandoned after all, according to a post on ResetEra.
Sleuths on the gaming forum ResetEra discovered on March 5 that Blue Box Game Studios' director, Hasan Kahraman, has a new game connected to his PlayStation account. The game is titled Abandoned: Gospels of Blood, suggesting that Kahraman may be attempting to resurrect a version of the once-maligned PS5 project. That's it, though. There's no trailer, no demo, no release date--nothing at all. So, to understand the significance of this insignificant update, we have to go back to 2021.
Back in April 2021, developer Hasan Kahraman and his team at Blue Box Game Studios pulled back the curtain on Abandoned. Revealing it on the PlayStation Blog, the game was described as a "cinematic, first-person horror survival-shooter" with photorealistic graphics and a highly detailed, open-world environment. It looked creepy yet stunning, but it also kind of resembled a Silent Hill game. Or, at least, that was the theory after the project was unveiled, with netizens linking Abandoned to the iconic survival-horror series and assuming Kahraman was a stand-in for gaming auteur Hideo Kojima. (The two do share similar initials, after all, though Kojima has since denied being involved with Abandoned in any capacity.)
There was a PS5 app that was supposed to house screenshots, a demo of the game, and videos, as well as the full game when it launched "later [that] year," according to Kahraman. However, that never happened. In fact, the game just ... vanished. Assets were deleted. Tweets were scrubbed. Information was scarce. Essentially, it was a form of vaporware, publicly announced software that never saw the light of day.
Despite its vanishing act, there was a claim that a prologue would launch sometime in early 2022. However, much like the game and app before it, this never actually came out. And once again, the project scurried into the darkness, never to be heard of again.
Sources told GameSpot in June 2022 that Blue Box Game Studios was misleading fans with Abandoned. More than half a dozen people who had close contact with Kahraman explained that the project was in disarray, that promises were unfulfilled, and that the private chat the team used to solicit business deals had become toxic. Apparently, sources claimed Kahraman spent more time playing Rainbow Six Siege than working on Abandoned.
That's anyone's guess. Blue Box Game Studios' X account has been inactive since November 2022, when the team thanked Kojima for openly addressing conspiracy theories. There's a YouTube channel connected to the Netherlands-based developer, but it has no videos, and the studio has no other social media accounts. There also doesn't appear to be an official account for Kahraman on any social media network.
So, who knows? Is Abandoned ... abandoned? Maybe. As Push Square suggested in a March 6 report, Gospels of Blood could just be Kahraman testing the game. Or it could be Kahraman trying to drum up hype for a project that may never actually come out. Only time will tell.
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Sleuths on the gaming forum ResetEra discovered on March 5 that Blue Box Game Studios' director, Hasan Kahraman, has a new game connected to his PlayStation account. The game is titled Abandoned: Gospels of Blood, suggesting that Kahraman may be attempting to resurrect a version of the once-maligned PS5 project. That's it, though. There's no trailer, no demo, no release date--nothing at all. So, to understand the significance of this insignificant update, we have to go back to 2021.
A Trip Down (Abandoned) Memory Lane
Back in April 2021, developer Hasan Kahraman and his team at Blue Box Game Studios pulled back the curtain on Abandoned. Revealing it on the PlayStation Blog, the game was described as a "cinematic, first-person horror survival-shooter" with photorealistic graphics and a highly detailed, open-world environment. It looked creepy yet stunning, but it also kind of resembled a Silent Hill game. Or, at least, that was the theory after the project was unveiled, with netizens linking Abandoned to the iconic survival-horror series and assuming Kahraman was a stand-in for gaming auteur Hideo Kojima. (The two do share similar initials, after all, though Kojima has since denied being involved with Abandoned in any capacity.)
There was a PS5 app that was supposed to house screenshots, a demo of the game, and videos, as well as the full game when it launched "later [that] year," according to Kahraman. However, that never happened. In fact, the game just ... vanished. Assets were deleted. Tweets were scrubbed. Information was scarce. Essentially, it was a form of vaporware, publicly announced software that never saw the light of day.
Despite its vanishing act, there was a claim that a prologue would launch sometime in early 2022. However, much like the game and app before it, this never actually came out. And once again, the project scurried into the darkness, never to be heard of again.
Sources told GameSpot in June 2022 that Blue Box Game Studios was misleading fans with Abandoned. More than half a dozen people who had close contact with Kahraman explained that the project was in disarray, that promises were unfulfilled, and that the private chat the team used to solicit business deals had become toxic. Apparently, sources claimed Kahraman spent more time playing Rainbow Six Siege than working on Abandoned.
Abandoned Is Just That, Then?
That's anyone's guess. Blue Box Game Studios' X account has been inactive since November 2022, when the team thanked Kojima for openly addressing conspiracy theories. There's a YouTube channel connected to the Netherlands-based developer, but it has no videos, and the studio has no other social media accounts. There also doesn't appear to be an official account for Kahraman on any social media network.
So, who knows? Is Abandoned ... abandoned? Maybe. As Push Square suggested in a March 6 report, Gospels of Blood could just be Kahraman testing the game. Or it could be Kahraman trying to drum up hype for a project that may never actually come out. Only time will tell.
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