Abandoned to Get Playable Prologue at the Start of 2022

The furore over Abandoned, the not-Kojima-developed horror shooter/survival game from Blue Box Game Studios, has died down. Perhaps this is why the game has only received a brief update on the PlayStation 5 that could be easily missed unless you went looking for it. As spotted by Push Square, this update states there’ll be a playable prologue arriving for Abandoned soon.

The update can be found by locating the Abandoned Realtime Experience app on the PlayStation Store on the PS5, or the app itself if you already have it installed. In the News section, the latest update says: “We are excited to announced that the Prologue chapter releases Q1 2022. A specific date will be announced shortly. Stay tuned!” According to an FAQ on the developer’s website, the playable prologue is “a standalone game with its own set of Trophy’s [sic] on PS5”.

So far, the Realtime Experience app only contains a brief 5 second teaser, one that was already available to view on Twitter before it became available on the app. At the time, the teaser also said there would be a cinematic trailer coming soon, as well as the aforementioned playable prologue. Game creator Hasan Kahraman went on to promise the trailer would arrive “really soon”, but that was back in August and there’s been no mention of it in the four months that have followed. It’s still supposed to arrive before the playable prologue, but whether that actually happens remains to be seen.

According to the FAQ, the reason for the repeated teaser in the app was because the team had to “trim the opening teaser” because of technical issues. They also say the game was “announced too soon”. The early announcement and all of the rumors surrounding the involvement of Hideo Kojima meant the game attracted a far bigger audience than the studio was anticipating. The studio decided they needed to polish the game more before its debut and “even now, the game isn’t ready for the public eye to see”.

Abandoned won’t even be the game’s real name; this is supposed to be announced during a gameplay reveal. The app launched with empty spots for a cinematic reveal trailer, another trailer, a release trailer, and two gameplay demonstration videos. None of these have received mentions in the latest announcement and it could be that we now skip straight to the playable prologue. We’ll just have to see what, if anything, happens next.

[Source: Push Square, Blue Box Game Studios]