PS5 Horror Game Abandoned Returns to Store, But Is It Real?

Abandoned, the PS5 survival horror game once thought to be a secret Hideo Kojima project, is back on the PlayStation Store with a 2027 release window. But after years of delays and conspiracy theories, can it escape its vaporware reputation

Remember Abandoned? The PS5 survival horror game that everyone thought was secretly Hideo Kojima's next big thing? Well, it's back on the PlayStation Store. Again. Cue the confusion.

For those who missed the saga: Abandoned was announced in 2021 by indie studio Blue Box Game, originally set to launch that same year. Then it got delayed indefinitely in 2022, with the devs promising, "We will continue to work on the game and we will notify you when we are ready." That notification never came. The game's store page has been taken down and re-added more times than we can count. Now it's live again, sporting a vague 2027 release window and a description that's almost comically sparse: "Abandoned is a horror survival shooter with the focus on realism." That's it. That's the pitch.

So why does this game keep pulling us back in? Because back in 2021, a huge chunk of the internet was convinced Abandoned was actually a secret Kojima project. The announcement teaser showed gray woods and sparse trees, which fans twisted into evidence of a Silent Hill revival by way of Metal Gear. Then there was the Blue Box conspiracy: theorists on the half-joking subreddit r/TheBlueBoxConspiracy argued that Blue Box itself was a Death Stranding reference. Both Kojima Productions and Blue Box are indie studios. Death Stranding's protagonist Sam sometimes hauls blue boxes. One time, he dropped a box of oranges—an orange box. And the complementary color to orange? Blue. Case closed, right? One believer declared, "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." They even admitted, "Does it sound crazy? Yeah, maybe."

Blue Box denied any Kojima connection, and eventually, most people moved on. That's when Abandoned started to live up to its name. The promised playable Prologue never materialized. Blue Box went silent on social media. Their YouTube page doesn't even show Abandoned's old trailers anymore. The narrative shifted from "secret Kojima game" to "scam." A Reddit comment from four years ago summed it up: "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."

Now, with this new 2027 release window, is anything different? Not really. The store listing is back, but the description is still bare-bones. There's no new trailer, no gameplay, no real proof that Abandoned is any closer to existing. It's just... there. Again. The only thing this return really confirms is that Abandoned wasn't a shared hallucination—it's a real listing for a game that may or may not ever come out.

Given the history of conspiracy theories and controversy, it's hard to get excited. The game's reputation is already defined by years of silence and broken promises. A vague 2027 date doesn't change that. But hey, at least it's something. If you're still holding out hope for a Kojima-style horror shooter from Blue Box, you've got a date to circle on your calendar. Just don't hold your breath.

What do you think? Is Abandoned finally going to happen, or is this just another chapter in the longest-running vaporware saga? Will you be picking it up if it ever launches?