Rumors and speculation have been running wild in relation to a PS5 exclusive from a little-known indie studio named Blue Box Game Studios.
You see, while superficially “Abandoned” looks like just another survival horror game from a small developer, a series of coincidences have led people to tie this game to legendary Japanese designer Hideo Kojima.
Actually, people are speculating that Abandoned might be a front for a Hideo Kojima game, a new entry in the Silent Hill series which very well may be Silent Hills, a game cancelled back in 2015 when Kojima left his then employer Konami by the back door.
And more recently more strange coincidences linking Hideo Kojima to Blue Box Game Studios and Abandoned have popped up, such as one spotted by one Reddit user (via comicbook.com).
Said user noted that Hasan Kahraman (who is one of the key people behind Abandoned and Blue Box) started using a picture of a small island as a Twitter background. As the man points out, the text for a small island in Japanese translated to English is “Kojima”.
This is definitely a difficult coincidence to ignore, but another supposed link between Kojima and Abandoned has emerged more recently too as reported by GamesRadar.
A teaser tweet by Blue Box to promote the Abandoned “realtime experience” (a trailer app that people can already begin preloading) features a blurry background image which Hideo Kojima fans instantly recognized as a character from his Metal Gear Solid games.
Are you ready? We are! pic.twitter.com/dQJwjot99S
— BLUE BOX Game Studios (@BBGameStudios) July 27, 2021
As GamesRadar points out, this could be either Big Boss or Solidus Snake, although other people on Twitter have highlighted the fact that this is actually a stock image of a guy wearing an eyepatch, that anyone can get hold off for a fee…
But still, it’s pretty odd that a studio that previously put out a statement denying any links to Kojima would stoke the fires of controversy once again by using a background image which clearly points to Kojima.
And I am inclined to agree that this is indeed a ruse perpetrated by Kojima to draw attention to his next game, likely another entry in the Silent Hills series which we will know more about next month.
This will likely happen when the first content for the Abandoned trailers app becomes available on August 10. People have already been able to pre-load the app since July 29, with Blue Box Game Studios having previously announced in a tweet that some sort of introduction to the game will be available on August 10, with a first trailer coming later in the month.
We’re excited to announce that the Abandoned Trailers App will be available to preload free of charge for all PS5 users on July 29 with the introduction available on August 10 followed by the first trailer later in August.
— BLUE BOX Game Studios (@BBGameStudios) July 11, 2021
It is also odd that a game by an indie developer like Blue Box not only gets a fancy trailer app for its game, but also that people can begin pre-loading this app so many days in advance on PS5.
It’s likely that there’s something big behind Abandoned, then.
And let’s not forget that Kojima has pulled off this kind of thing before, like he did with a promotional campaign for his Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain game. On that occasion, he relied on a fictional studio (Moby Dick Studio) headed by a mysterious figure named Joakim Mogren.
There were also coincidences tying the game to Kojima that time (such as the not so difficult to spot fact that Joakim is an anagram of Kojima), with the charade finally put to an end at GDC 2013, when Kojima revealed that The Phantom Pain was actually an upcoming Metal Gear Solid game.
Nonetheless, Kojima and Silent Hill fans should still keep their expectations in check, let this not turn out to be what they wanted it to be in the end, although it’s not unlikely people will be talking about Silent Hill: Abandoned (or a game titled along those lines) before this summer vacations come to an end…
Read more: ‘Abandoned’ could be Hideo Kojima’s Silent Hill game