Hardly any game is as mysterious as OD. For almost three years we have known that Hideo Kojima is working with Xbox and Jordan Peele on a horror game that is meant to give us, quite literally, an overdose of fear. So far we have only seen two teasers, one still image and a new poster. I have gathered what is actually known about OD and what is still speculation. My take: OD is Kojima's boldest experiment since P.T., and at the same time his riskiest.

Anyone who knows Kojima knows that everything around his games is often as exciting as the games themselves. With OD, though, things are different. Kojima, who usually releases teaser after teaser, is holding back noticeably this time. On his radio show Koji10 in autumn 2026, he said in essence that he does not want to reveal much this time and would rather quietly finish the game. That makes it all the more important to sort the few official facts properly.

The announcement: OD at The Game Awards 2023

OD was officially unveiled on December 7, 2023 at The Game Awards in Los Angeles. Kojima Productions and Xbox Game Studios announced the project together, according to the official press release as "A Hideo Kojima Game". Even back then it was clear: Academy Award-winning director Jordan Peele is on board, as one of several storytellers.

In the release, Kojima described the project like this: they are working with Xbox Game Studios and their cloud gaming technology to create a "very unique, immersive, and totally new style of game", or rather "a new form of media". On stage he stressed that OD is a game, but at the same time a movie. Xbox Wire also covered the announcement, noting that OD is meant to blur the boundaries between gaming and film.

The first teaser showed one thing above all: faces in close-up, real actors, captured photorealistically, and a lot of fear. There was no gameplay to be seen. Here is the 2023 teaser:

The concept: an overdose of fear

The title says it all. OD stands for "overdose". According to Kojima Productions, the game explores the concept of testing your fear threshold and what it means to "OD on fear". How exactly that is supposed to work technically, Kojima still has not revealed. So far, only this much is clear:

• According to Kojima, OD is a single-player game.
• It is being made with the help of Xbox cloud technology.
• It is developed in Unreal Engine 5, and according to Phil Spencer, Xbox also helps with technical work behind the scenes.
• Kojima talks about a completely new game system that has never existed before; "even the infrastructure" is new.

In June 2026, Kojima spoke a bit more openly in a large Entertainment Weekly feature on Xbox's 25th anniversary. He said he has had the idea for OD since working on the first Death Stranding and worked on it alone for a long time. He pitched the concept to many big and small companies, and all of them told him he was crazy. Only Xbox under Phil Spencer said yes. His goal is to go beyond the limit of "scariness" that other games have reached so far.

I find one side remark particularly interesting: for players who would stop when it gets too scary, he has come up with a system that lets them keep going. He would not say more so as not to give anything away. That is typical Kojima: Death Stranding 2 already lets you count a boss fight as won after a defeat. It is often speculated that OD could measure or analyse players' reactions. However, such a "fear meter" has not been officially confirmed. Only the goal of testing the fear threshold is confirmed.

The cast: Sophia Lillis, Hunter Schafer and Udo Kier

As with Death Stranding, Kojima relies on well-known faces from film and TV for OD as well. Three names were confirmed for the lead roles in 2023:

• Sophia Lillis, known as young Beverly Marsh from the It films and from Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. She is the face of the Knock teaser and the new poster.
• Hunter Schafer, known from Euphoria, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes and the horror film Cuckoo.
• Udo Kier, the German cult figure from countless cult and horror films such as Flesh for Frankenstein.

The story around Udo Kier is a sad one. The actor died on November 23, 2025 at the age of 81. Kojima later said on Koji10 that Kier had really looked forward to the project and had taken part in a three-day scan together with Hunter Schafer. Whether and how his recordings will appear in the finished game, Kojima has not said yet. For us as a German magazine, this is a particularly bitter point, because OD would have been one of his last big roles.

Jordan Peele and Kojima's "horror Avengers"

Jordan Peele is the most prominent name next to Kojima. The director of Get Out, Us and Nope is, according to Kojima Productions, "one of several talented storytellers". Even at the announcement, Kojima stressed that it is not only about Peele and that other creative partners are involved. He likes to call this group his horror "Avengers". He has not officially named anyone yet, though.

In September 2025 it became clearer what that could look like. The subtitle of the new teaser was "Knock", and Kojima explained that this is his part: he is designing the fear of the knock, because he himself is really afraid of loud knocking sounds. Jordan Peele will do a different kind of fear. A lot therefore points to an anthology format in which each creator designs their own segment with its own fear. This structure has not been fully officially confirmed yet, though.

And what about Nicolas Winding Refn? The Danish director is a close friend of Kojima and lent his likeness to the character Heartman in Death Stranding. As far as we could find, there is no official involvement in OD, however. Anyone listing him in forums as one of the "horror Avengers" is speculating.

OD – Knock: the teaser that recalls P.T.

The most important look at OD so far came in September 2025 during the "Beyond The Strand" livestream for the 10th anniversary of Kojima Productions. There, the studio showed the "OD – Knock" teaser. It is filmed in first person and looks like gameplay: Sophia Lillis receives a red card with an instruction through a gap in a door, enters an almost empty room and lights candles on an altar one by one. With every candle, the knocking at the door gets louder, until the camera turns, we see her panicked face and large grey hands reach for her.

Of course, many were immediately reminded of P.T., the playable teaser for the cancelled Silent Hills. At the event, Phil Spencer called OD "bold, unique, and unmistakably from this studio". Kojima also revealed that the team wants to scan real scary locations around the world. Half-jokingly, he said he wants to be the first to scan a ghost.

In June 2026, a first still image followed in the Entertainment Weekly feature: a gloomy, yellowish hallway with many doors, an old TV apparently showing Sophia Lillis, and an eerie figure in a doorway. On October 30, 2026, Kojima Productions finally released a new poster for OD – Knock. It shows Sophia Lillis looking up at a mysterious red object, along with the tagline "For all players and screamers". Since October 31, the red door from the teaser has even been recreated in the "Beyond The Strand" exhibition at Azabudai Hills in Tokyo; the exhibition runs until December 20, 2026.

Strike, standstill and restart: development in 2025 and 2026

Why is all of this taking so long? One reason is the video game strike by the US actors' union SAG-AFTRA, which lasted around a year. Because OD relies heavily on performance capture with Hollywood actors, exactly these recordings were on hold for a long time. According to Kojima, the team worked with stand-ins for a temporary version in the meantime, which now has to be replaced at great effort.

At the Xbox show for the Tokyo Game Show 2026 on September 17, Kojima gave the all-clear: performance capture and voice recording had resumed, and production is proceeding on schedule. Sophia Lillis, Hunter Schafer and the team had delivered intense and outstanding performances. OD is a completely new kind of game that tests the thresholds of fear and, after a lot of experimentation, is slowly taking shape. On Koji10 he later added that shooting has been going on since June and will continue until the end of the year, with dubbing work carrying over into 2027.

Also important: when Microsoft reorganised its games investments in summer 2026 and put several projects under review, OD was reportedly spared. In the EW feature, new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma even called OD "a deeply moving game" that represents "another kind of game".

OD, Physint and Death Stranding 2: Kojima's Xbox future

To put OD in context, it is worth looking at Kojima's other projects. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach launched on PS5 in June 2025, with Sony as partner just like the first game. OD was an Xbox project from the start, with Microsoft not only publishing but, according to Phil Spencer, also helping on the technical side.

In September 2026 came the big surprise: PHYSINT, Kojima's action-espionage game that was announced with Sony in January 2024, is now also coming from Xbox. According to Kojima, PlayStation unexpectedly cancelled the project in mid-June, and Xbox stepped in. At Tokyo Game Show, Bill Skarsgård was confirmed as the lead actor. More on this in our PHYSINT news.

This means Kojima Productions is working on two new IPs for Xbox, and the partnership is even set to expand into film and television. The order is clear: OD comes first, while PHYSINT is considered a much longer-term project. For Xbox, OD is therefore also a test run for a relationship that could become very important in the coming years.

Release and platforms: what we still don't know

This part is short, because there is hardly anything official:

• Release: There is neither a date nor a window. Since dubbing work runs into 2027, I do not expect a release before 2027.
• Platforms: None have been officially confirmed. Since Xbox Game Studios is publishing the game, Xbox Series X|S and PC seem likely. Whether and how the cloud plays a role is open.
• Scope and format: Probably an anthology with several segments; Kojima's part is called "Knock". How big the game will be is unknown.
• Price: Not yet known.

The cloud in particular raises questions. In 2023 it sounded as if cloud technology were a central building block. Since then, it has hardly been mentioned publicly; instead, terms like Unreal Engine 5 and a new game system come up. Whether OD will run only in the cloud, analyse player data in the cloud, or be installed locally as usual, we simply do not know.

My opinion: Kojima's boldest experiment since P.T.

I will be honest: I love Kojima's madness, and OD is exactly the kind of project I celebrate him for. After two huge Death Stranding games, he is daring to do something small, focused and uncomfortable again. The Knock teaser shows that he understands horror: a small space, a simple action, a sound and growing panic. Good horror does not need more than that.

At the same time, OD is a huge risk. A game that Kojima himself calls "a new form of media" can turn out great or fail because of its own ambitions. Add to that the strike, the death of Udo Kier and the question of how much of the original cloud idea will remain. And not without reason, fans already joke that OD stands for "Only Demo", in memory of P.T.

Still, I believe in the project. With Jordan Peele, Sophia Lillis and Hunter Schafer, Kojima has a team that knows horror, and with Xbox a partner that apparently gives him a lot of freedom. If OD turns out even half as disturbing as P.T., we will get one of the most exciting horror games of the coming years. As soon as there is new information, you will read it here. Now it is your turn: are you looking forward to OD, or has P.T. made you cautious?

You can find more about the studio on our pages for Kojima Productions and Xbox Game Studios.