OD is an upcoming horror video game developed by Kojima Productions and published by Xbox Game Studios. It is being designed and written by Hideo Kojima in partnership with filmmaker Jordan Peele, among other storytellers yet to be revealed and, as with Kojima Productions' Death Stranding, it features a cast of real actors, starring Sophia Lillis, Hunter Schafer and Udo Kier in roles not yet specified.^[1]

It was officially announced with the release of a teaser trailer at The Game Awards 2023.^[1]

Gameplay

On December 1st, Kojima Productions registered three trademarks in Japan that appear to make direct reference to OD: the first of these trademarks bears the name "OD", while the other two are, "Social Scream System" and "Social Stealth System ", that could refer to what will be the aspects of the gameplay, as happened with the “Social Strand System” of Death Stranding.^[2]

The KNOCK teaser trailer suggests the use of first-person perspective. There are no weapons or combat system, with the protagonist intent on exploring a room in an apartment, and lighting candles using matches to perform a certain ritual, suggesting the presence of an inventory.

Development

During an interview at Comic-Con 2020, the mangaka Junji Ito, present in Death Stranding as the prepper the Engineer, reveals that he was contacted by Kojima regarding a horror game he was working on, and that he invited him to work on it with him .^[3] Junji Ito was supposed to collaborate with Kojima and Guillermo Del Toro on Konami's cancelled Silent Hills.

Rumors and leak

During the Xbox+Bethesda Game Showcase 2022, Kojima appears in a video making it official that he is working on a new exclusive production, describing the project as a game that has been among his desires for a long time, but for which the technology was missing necessary. The latter, confirmed the game director, was made available by the progress made by Microsoft in the field of Cloud gaming.^[4] In November 2022, screenshots, and subsequently a video starring Mama from Death Stranding, of "Overdose", Kojima's exclusive title for Xbox, began to circulate online^[5] confirming a previous piece of news from Tom Henderson, who revealed the working title and the horror imprint.^[6]

During an interview with the French division of IGN, for the seventh anniversary of Kojima Productions, Hideo Kojima shared an interesting anecdote about the game, revealing that he had been thinking about the project for about six years but that it needed an infrastructure that was not previously necessary, and that he had proposed the project to other companies but that only Microsoft believed in it.^[7] In an interview granted to the Japanese magazine Famitsu, Phil Spencer updated on the close collaboration between Xbox and Hideo Kojima, confirming that the work is progressing well and that he is thinking of a dedicated event to present the Xbox exclusive.^[8]

Official reveal

The official presentation of OD, the new horror experience developed by Hideo Kojima in collaboration with Xbox Game Studios, takes place at The Game Awards 2023. The in-engine teaser shows the digital photogrammetry scanned versions of the protagonists of OD acting out a pangram, with a door opening at the end, with a technical sector indistinguishable from reality thanks to the advanced creative tools of MetaHuman and Unreal Engine 5. Hideo Kojima has confirmed the collaboration with Jordan Peele (the Oscar-winning director of Get Out, Us and Nope), who will be one of the numerous 'talented storytellers' that Kojima Productions promises to involve in the OD project, with Sophia Lillis (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves), Hunter Schaffer (Euphoria) and Udo Kier (Flesh for Frankenstein) as protagonists.^[1]

On December 10, Hunter Schaffer visits Kojima Productions, signs the wall of dedications and for the occasion Shinkawa gives her a drawn portrait.^[9] Later, Vladimir Mastilovic and a team from 3Lateral, a Serbian studio dedicated to human and motion digitalization technologies and which assisted KJP in DS2 and OD, visit the studio.^[10]

A member of the Silent Hill subreddit discovered hidden letter in single frame of the OD teaser, spotting the letters A-T-A-M-I in the mouth of actor Udo Kier as he speaks the phonetic pangram. Atami is a city in the Shizuoka prefecture of Japan. The kanji that make up Shizuoka’s name (静岡), taken separately, translate to “silent” (静) and “hill” (岡) while Atami (熱海市) literally means "hot ocean", a reference to the town's famous onsen hot springs.^[11]

The work continues through thick and thin

Through an end/beginning post, Kojima reveals that: “I have to shoot for OD, collaborate with Avengers“, confirming the initial work status of the project.^[12] With a subsequent post, Kojima recalls how his previous titles were counter-current experiences and that OD will be "equally different".^[13] At the end of January 2024, a tweet from Kojima shows an Xbox-branded pen in an out-of-focus room and a long, dark wig, probably from a recording/writing session.^[14] In the following March, two other tweets show 3D scanning sessions and motion capture of an actress and a subsequent dubbing session.^[15] Two further posts show a dubbing session, of an actress seen from behind reciting the same pangram of the trailer,^[16] and the table in the acting room showing a photo on a table. The photo depicts what appears to be a bathtub, probably an in-game screenshot.^[17]

Via his 2024 end of year post on X, Kojima confirm the game development progress and the scanning of actors and environment but also that in the second half of the year, scanning and filming were suspended due to the SAG strike, hoping for a resume in 2025.^[18]

In an interview with SSENSE, Hideo Kojima also dwelt on OD, underlining that his next game will be "something totally different" from what the video game market currently offers and for this very reason "people will either love it or hate it" after trying it and that "the real evaluations will be seen later, 10 or 20 years later", he then claims.^[19] Amid a series of layoffs and canceled projects at Microsoft, Jason Schreier confirms, through a company spokesperson, that OD is still in development.^[20] Via a post on X, V1IBRA confirms Schreier's post by posting a screenshot from a Kojima Productions employee^[21] revealing that the game entered full production in July.

Kojima Productions 10th Anniversary Livestream: Beyond the Strand

During the Beyond the Strand event, the studio's 10th anniversary event, a new teaser trailer for OD, titled "KNOCK" and created entirely in Unreal Engine 5 with the support of MetaHuman for the creation of human faces, with a first official poster also released for the occasion, accompanied by the tagline "For all players and screamers". The teaser showed Sophia Lillis's character performing a ritual before being interrupted by the knocking of an unseen entity, also providing a small taste of the game's atmosphere, including abandoned mansions, candles, mysterious notes, screams and tears of pure terror.

Speaking at the event, Phil Spencer said: "we have a shared goal, and that's to make Kojima-san's vision available to all gamers, everywhere. We can't wait for players to experience OD as soon as it's ready", suggesting that OD could be released on PS5, in addition to Xbox, PC, Game Pass, and Cloud. During the presentation, Kojima also said that the game would revolve around different fears, citing the sound of "knocking" as one of his, and stated that Jordan Peele would be handling a "different kind of fear".

Updates at the end of 2025

Interviewed by Famitsu about the Redmond company's plans, Phil Spencer revealed that Xbox Game Studios and Kojima Productions are working closely together on both the gameplay and the technology. He also reveals that they have not yet decided on a release date also due to the SAG strike that occurred in 2023, which made it difficult to maintain the original plans on production times, delaying development.^[22]

To celebrate Halloween, an illustration depicting a lit candle in the shape of a red demon child and an airplane made of smoke, all elements present in the latest KNOCK trailer, created by artist Entei Ryu, is being released.^[23]

On 23 November 2025, at the age of 81, Udo Kier died in a hospital in Palm Springs. According to Kojima, who remembers him with a post on his X account, due to the strike Kier was supposed to start shooting his scenes in 2026, presumably together with the other actors, with him constantly keeping in touch with the game designer.^[24] At this time, it is unknown whether his character will be recast or eliminated. In a early December interview with ananweb,^[25] Kojima described OD as something completely different from what normal horror games offer, and even hinted that he himself doesn't know how effective his formula will be:"I can't say exactly what it is yet, nor do I know if it will work," and that, despite having created stealth and delivery games that seem unique for their narrative structure but have gameplay elements common to other titles, OD will offer a gameplay synthesis that is unprecedented for the horror game scene: "This time, we’re trying to change the service model from the ground up, so it should be quite challenging." Finally on the "Knock" trailer Kojima reveals: "We've filled the trailer with hints, so if you keep thinking about it, you might figure it out."^[26]

Gallery

Key art

Official screenshots

TBA

Trailers

Notes

• During the visit of Phil Spencer's team to Kojima Productions, the two teams went to visit the Kanda Shrine to carry out an Oharai purification ceremony, something very common in Japan before horror or drama productions.^[27]
  • Another reason for the ceremony was that the staff had heard a "metallic sound" in the studio, which was repeated every hour, during the night recordings. The recorded sound is the same one heard in the background for OD's teaser trailer.^[28]

• The team of storytellers assembled by Kojima for OD is called the "Avengers", a clear reference to the Marvel's superhero team.^[28]

External links

• Official website (Kojima Productions)

References