Bend Studio was forced to shut down the ongoing development of an unannounced live-service shooter last year amid restructuring and layoffs that led to 30% of the company disappearing. The game that was cancelled would have been a third-person, military-themed shooter, but we know little more than that about the abandoned title.
Recently, fresh files surfaced online from the project, taken from a former Bend Studio animator responsible for designing turrets, character gait, and some minor animations, such as throwing knives and deploying drones.
‘Mirror Pond’ Animations Appear Online
It’s not a huge leap into uncovering Mirror Pond, which was the project name for Bend Studio’s cancelled third-person shooter, but it’s something. In the files pulled from a former animator’s portfolio, we can see a third-person perspective (which we already knew about) explored from a more technical standpoint.
What’s assumed to be a player character model walks across the screen, brandishing long firearms and traipsing with a traditional military movement pattern. In another clip, we see the same character throwing what looks like knives, before shooting something from a forearm-mounted device, and deploying a small drone mounted on their back.
There’s also a shot of a turret activating and firing at an unseen target.
These files were uncovered by MP1st, but no source was given.
It all points to Mirror Pond having been planned as a near-future third-person shooter of sorts, perhaps aligning with the bygone days of Syphon Filter. That’s one of the franchises that allowed Bend Studio to cut its teeth in the gaming world, and it featured spycraft, a third-person perspective, and techy gadgets.
In September 2025, Bend Studio opened up and started hiring again for a new, unannounced multiplayer title. What that is remains to be seen, but it could be an attempt to recover the fragments of the cancelled live-service ‘Mirror Pond’.
Fans have long hoped that a new Days Gone project would surface, but as we all know, that’s very unlikely.
What do you think Mirror Pond would have looked like? Let us know on the Insider Gaming Discord server.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out our full review of HumanitZ’s 1.0 launch
Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
More from Grant Taylor-Hill
I honestly wish Sony let them have a little bit longer to cook with Days Gone, then it might not have been so buggy on release and more people might have bought it, and we’d get a sequel, the remaster’s sweet tho