Described as a "cinematic horror survival shooter" featuring "realistic" gameplay mechanics, Abandoned's premise centres around Jason Longfield, who must escape a forest after being kidnapped.

Originally announced as a PlayStation 5 exclusive title in April 2021, Abandoned drew significant media attention and hype due to the game trailer's stylistic similarities to Silent Hill and Metal Gear Solid, leading to speculation that Hideo Kojima was involved in the game's development.

After poor reception, the early access release was removed from digital storefronts, and Kahraman claims that development will be completed by outside studio CreateQ, with Blue Box acting as the publisher.

[13] Abandoned was first announced as an open world, "cinematic horror survival shooter" game on April 7, 2021 via the PlayStation Blog, along with a minute-long teaser trailer.

[20][21][22] The speculation surrounding Kojima's involvement led to the creation of a dedicated subreddit on Reddit, r/TheBlueBoxConspiracy, by fans of Silent Hill to discuss the rumours.

[25] Similarly, on July 27, 2021, Blue Box shared a teaser for Abandoned featuring a blurred image of a person with a left-eyepatch that was compared to Big Boss, one of the protagonists of Kojima's Metal Gear Solid series.

[28] Kojima remained quiet on the rumours surrounding his involvement in Abandoned until he addressed and discredited them during an interview on his Brain Structure podcast with Geoff Keighley on November 3, 2022.

Kojima said that he was "surprised" by the extent of the rumours, which he did not take seriously until users began sending deepfaked images and messages to him en masse, and described the situation as a "nuisance".

[41] By August 2021, Abandoned's gameplay was changed from open world to "a linear story", which Kahraman claimed was done to maintain the game's high-quality graphics.

[42] On March 31, 2022, Blue Box released a statement to Twitter announcing that Abandoned: Prologue had been delayed indefinitely, with Kahraman saying that it will come out whenever it is ready.

[45] Kahraman denied these claims, and said it was due to the game's concept changing, though also stating that he regretted the decision to delete the tweets.

[46] In May 16, 2022, some of Abandoned's assets were leaked via Reddit, showing the game's concept had changed drastically from how it was originally characterized into a political thriller.

[47] Although highly anticipated upon its initial announcement, the lack of substantive updates surrounding Abandoned's development have led to accusations that the game is vaporware.

[51][52] On June 3, 2022, GameSpot published an investigative report which accused Kahraman of "toxic" activities on a private chat room revolving around the game, in which he revealed scant development information but attempted a romantic advance on one of his artists, who later left the group, allowed a 12-year-old to insult other members with no consequences, and forced others to play Rainbow Six Siege with him.