OD is a new horror game from Hideo Kojima that's being developed with Xbox Game Studios.
First unveiled almost three years ago during The Game Awards 2023 showcase, Kojima is setting out to create a horror experience "no one has ever seen before", that is game, but "at the same time a movie". With another tantalizing teaser trailer dropping in 2025, which gave off some serious P.T vibes, we've steadily been hearing more about the upcoming horror game.
OD is actually one of two new games being worked on, with upcoming Hideo Kojima game, Physint, also in the pipeline. But from the involvement of Jordan Peele, to the reveal of some of the cast involved, and some details from Kojima that tease horror fans are in for plenty of scares, OD is one very curious project we're eager to see more of. While we await further updates, you can learn more below as we breakdown all of the latest news and details about OD.
OD (Overdose) gameplay experience
At least when creative director Hideo Kojima was working on Metal Gear Solid games, you sort of knew what you were getting – cinematic stealth action. But as soon as he started to stretch into other franchises and new IP, his work became more difficult to anticipate. P.T. was a masterclass in looping psychological horror, Death Stranding, an oddly esoteric game about hiking through an apocalypse, and then there's OD.
Kojima himself has said that he is "creating a very unique, immersive, and totally new style of game – or rather, a new form of media." The first teaser trailer ends with a sting claiming that Overdose will be "for all the players and screamers." There's a lot to unravel here, so let's start with genre, as that's easier to figure out: OD will be a horror. Kojima Productions says that "OD explores the concept of testing your fear threshold, and what it means to OD on fear."
Okay, so that's a start. The studio also says that it will do this "while blurring the boundaries of gaming and film", which is where things start getting a little more complicated. At The Game Awards, Kojima reaffirmed that OD "is a game, don't get me wrong" but then went on to note that "at the same time, it's a movie; and at the same time, it's a new form of media."
It does sound a tad confusing, which is likely why Academy Award winning filmmaker Jordan Peele (Get Out, Us, Nope) has come on board to collaborate. In fact, Kojima later revealed Peele is just one of "several talented storytellers involved in the project", with a host of big names said to be attached in a group he refers to as 'The Avengers'. We don't yet know any more names involved in the project (beyond the actors mentioned below), but Kojima teases that whenever he shows the list of people who are a part of OD to his agents and managers "they can hardly believe it's true". How curious.
A very bizarre leak in 2022 wasn't all that helpful in figuring out what style of play we should anticipate here, but it could blend some degree of active and passive play – owing to the fact that OD's development is being driven through a partnership with Microsoft Gaming, leveraging the power of Xbox Cloud Gaming for development.
Kojima says he wants to "make something nobody has seen before", with Kojima revealing in 2026 in a 25th Xbox anniversary interview with Entertainment Weekly that he wants to "go beyond limit of the 'scariness' that other games reached", with OD said to include a mysterious system that will help you to keep going if you get too scared while playing.
Set to be a horror game that will blur the line between games and film, what final shape it will take remains to be see, and it'll likely be some time before more is revealed about its gameplay.
OD cast
Hideo Kojima has unveiled the actors who will take starring roles in OD, although he is yet to confirm the names of the characters that they will eventually play. It's likely to be a little while before we learn more about the OD cast, but you can find the current list of will star in the project here:
- Sophia Lillis (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves)
- Hunter Schaffer (Euphoria)
- Udo Kier (Flesh for Frankenstein)
OD teaser trailers
The first OD trailer was unveiled at The Game Awards 2023. The short teaser shows three of the core cast in what appears to effectively be motion-capture screen tests – floating heads on a black background, rendered by Epic's Unreal Engine 5 and MetaHuman technologies, as the eyes illuminate the lights and camera in front of them. You can watch the first teaser trailer for Hideo Kojima's OD above.
The second OD Knock teaser trailer sets a very unsettling scene, with some serious PT vibes. With text prefaces the teaser, certain lines of text are deliberately blocked out to keep us guessing, but what we can make out is intriguing in and of itself. "Ten years since the [redacted] horror [redacted, the opening scene reads. "The cursed [redacted] have once again [redacted] into the forbidden. "
We then see a door, with a mysterious card with a face symbol on one side that slides through its frame. We then see the other side of the card as its flipped over, which reads, "Light the fires to celebrate their", and the following two words are blurred out. It's all very mysterious. We then see OD's protagonist, played by Sophia Lillis, lighting candles as a knock on the door behind them gets louder and louder. Finally, the trailer closes out with a shot of Lillis' terrified expression as hands appear, and text teases that this is a game "for all players and screamers".
OD expected release date and platform speculation
The OD release date is still likely to be years away at this point. Creative director Hideo Kojima is certainly focused on it's development, but no release window has been set yet.
Kojima Productions and Xbox Game Studios announced their collaboration in 2022, explaining that the two development houses were working to utilize the power of the cloud. What that means for platforms is anybody's guess, but I'd suspect that it will land on Xbox Series X, PC, and mobile devices via Xbox Cloud Gaming and Xbox Game Pass.
For more, check out our pick of the best Xbox Series X games.
