In the midst of the Abandoned Realtime Experience app facing issues with its initial patch that was supposed to go live on August 10, developer BLUE BOX Game Studios took to Twitter yesterday to reassure followers that the studio is “100% real” and that the team is working hard on something it’s passionate about.
We ask everyone to calmly wait for the patch. We understand your frustration. We are 100% real and are working on a passionate game we believe in. This is what happend:
— BLUE BOX Game Studios (@BBGameStudios) August 12, 2021
While the tweets were in response to Twitter users who called the studio out for its unusual behavior, they come amid an investigation that unearthed a number of abandoned projects linked to BLUE BOX dating as far back as 2015.
Reddit user TicTacPaul published a lengthy timeline of events that starts with a 2015 Kickstarter for a game called Rewind. The campaign was apparently cancelled when BLUE BOX received funding from an investor. Interestingly, the Kickstarter mentions a playable teaser as well. In March 2015, that playable teaser was delayed due to “technical reasons.” In September 2015, Rewind‘s production came to a halt.
BLUE BOX then went on to announce two other games: The Lost Tape and The Haunting. The Lost Tape was apparently based on the idea behind Rewind and The Haunting was described as a game “heavily inspired by the popular Japanese horror game Fatal Frame.” A teaser for The Haunting bears a lot of resemblance to the Abandoned teaser. The game’s development has since been passed on to another studio.
BLUE BOX also released two mobile games, both of which were later pulled. One of them, Tales of The Six Swords, was pulled due to “technical issues.”
Much of this history was first discovered in our extensive investigation back in June into whether or not BLUE BOX and Abandoned were stand-ins for Hideo Kojima and Silent Hill, however, we don’t think that conspiracy holds much water anymore.
As far as Abandoned trailer app is concerned, BLUE BOX claims that it “dealt with multiple engine issues that occurred last minute after we spotted a graphical glitch.” This comes after the app was already delayed multiple time from its original June launch date.
Whatever Abandoned is, we can only hope to find out in due course, that is, if the project doesn’t follow BLUE BOX’s history.
[Source: Reddit via GamesRadar, BLUE BOX]