If you didn't know, Abandoned is a survival horror game under development by Blue Box Game Studios that's recently made headlines since the possibility that it may see the light of day had been cast into doubt. There were reports that the developer has been deleting past Tweets related to the game's future plans, and combined with the general lack of updates led to speculation that Abandoned may well be... erm... abandoned.All this chatter meant the man behind the developer has suddenly been in demand, and Abandoned's creator has now spoken out about his game while elaborating on its history. Speaking on the PlayStation podcast Sacred Symbols+, Hasan Kahraman was interviewed by journalist Colin Moriarty. Helpfully transcribed by VGC, we learned that Kahraman actually reached out to Konami, the publisher of Silent Hill, after speculation that Abandoned was connected to the famous survival horror series. Silent Hill has been a dormant series for some time, with the last mainline entry releasing a decade ago (Silent Hill: Downpour), although fans were given hope when Hideo Kojima released the brilliantly spooky P.T., a playable teaser that suggested the series would be making a return with the name Silent Hills. But Kojima eventually left Konami and the project was cancelled, leaving fans bereft and casting around for a successor. Unfortunately their hopes latched on to an unrelated project – in the form of Abandoned – and its developer had to clear things up.
"I reached out to them", Kahraman said on the podcast, referring to Konami. "I was stressed out because people thought it was Silent Hill. It got so out of hand, and you know, you're this small developer, you've never had a big audience, you're inexperienced. I reached out to Konami saying like, 'Hey you know what, it was never my intention' and they were really cool".
Fans had wondered if Hasan Kahraman may have actually been Hideo Kojima via a pseudonym, a theory bolstered somewhat by the fact his initials match that of the famous Japanese games developer. This got to the point that Kahraman felt compelled to appear on camera to debunk the theory.
In June 2021, he Tweeted a video of himself to end the speculation. "Just wanted to do a really quick video to show myself, that I'm a real person", Kahraman said in the video. "I'm not really associated with Hideo Kojima, not an actor, not working on Silent Hill, so yeah, I just wanted to show you guys my face and that I'm real, and hopefully we'll do a Q&A really soon".
The fate of Abandoned is still up in the air, however, with very little shown from the game. A promised playable prologue has yet to launch, from which Kahraman hoped to raise funds for the full game, but the game is not cancelled according to its dev.
Blue Box Game Studios earlier this week Tweeted: "In regards to the latest rumours regarding Abandoned being cancelled, our response to this is that these rumous are false".