For many years the game‑development landscape has been dominated by two heavyweight engines: Unity and Unreal. In fact, by 2025 roughly seventy percent of all titles launched on Steam were built with one of those platforms.
While the open‑source Godot engine has made notable strides recently, most large studios still rely on proprietary solutions such as Capcom’s RE Engine. Consequently, the market for game engines has seemed largely closed to newcomers. Enter Immens, a fledgling company founded by three industry veterans—Arjan Brussee, Sjoerd De Jong, and Michal Valient—who believe there is still room for innovation.
Their résumés read like a who's‑who of the gaming world, featuring stints at Epic Games (the creators of Unreal), Guerrilla Games, Boss Key, and even Apple. Together they aim to challenge the status quo and offer an alternative that leverages the latest advances in artificial intelligence. In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Brussee explained that the timing feels right for a new engine: "There’s an opportunity now to build something that didn’t exist a couple of years ago. With AI‑assisted programming, you can start from scratch again and get full‑featured results quickly under tight guidance and control." He stresses that the goal is not to replace developers with a black‑box, but to give them a more powerful, extensible foundation.
Valient, Immens’s chief technology officer, clarifies that the AI component is fundamentally different from the hype‑driven "prompt‑to‑asset" tools that dominate headlines. "Our AI is about making the engine itself highly extensible," he says. "Because AI can reason over large codebases, we design the engine so that even a solo developer can plug in a custom particle system, a bespoke animation pipeline, or any other feature without wrestling with rigid scripting layers.
The AI helps you extend the engine faster, not just generate content on demand." The motivation behind Immens is rooted in the current economic climate of game development. Brussee describes the environment as "rough": development costs are soaring, budgets are ballooning, and smaller studios are increasingly at risk of financial ruin.
"We need new ways of working that cut costs, shrink team sizes, and accelerate timelines," he argues. "If we can make games with fewer people and less money, we reduce the existential threat to studios and creators." De Jong, the chief product officer, points out that the engine market has become overly standardized and consolidated. While this has provided a reliable base, it also stifles creativity.
"The industry faces many challenges, and simply repeating old methods won’t solve them," he notes. "We need innovation, not more of the same." A key criticism of existing engines is their monolithic nature. Developers must adapt to proprietary file formats and rigid workflows, which can be a barrier to rapid iteration. De Jong believes AI can flip this script by delivering an engine that molds itself to the developer’s needs.
"It has to be flexible—swap modules, append new tools, modify interfaces. I can build a UI that matches my personal shortcuts, my team’s pipeline, and the specific demands of a project," he says.
Valient acknowledges AI’s power but also its volatility. "AI is incredibly capable, but it can go off the rails if you’re not vigilant," he warns. Immens therefore embeds transparency and control: users can see exactly what the engine is doing, review its decision history, and reproduce results reliably. This level of oversight turns AI from a mysterious black box into a trustworthy assistant.
The practical impact of such control is illustrated with a simple example. Previously, creating five characters with a unique trait might have required weeks of manual work. With Immens, a developer could sketch the requirement over coffee, let the AI generate the assets, and then reuse the same workflow multiple times before discarding it. What once cost a small studio a significant portion of its budget becomes a lightweight, repeatable process.
Flexibility is baked into Immens’s architecture. The framework does not enforce a single workflow; developers decide how much AI to incorporate and where. "We provide the scaffolding, but you choose the construction method," De Jong says. This openness extends to interoperability: Immens adopts open, text‑based standards so that tools like Blender, Maya, or any generative‑AI pipeline can communicate seamlessly.
"When files are text‑based, any program can read them. The AI can parse those files, manipulate them, and feed them back into the engine," Brussee explains. This approach counters the “closed‑loop” nature of many traditional engines that struggle to integrate with external software.
The broader conversation about AI in games is polarized. Some commentators on LinkedIn hype the notion of "click‑to‑game"—the idea that a single prompt could spawn a Grand Theft Auto‑scale experience. Immens’s founders are cautious.
While they acknowledge that future engines might become that effortless, they view AI primarily as a tool that amplifies human creativity, not a replacement for it. "Big games and everything in between will be made better because AI makes everyone more capable," Valient asserts. "The current negative perception stems from disruption at a scale no one has seen before." De Jong adds a responsible‑use perspective: "AI is a tool, like any technology before it.
It can be misused, but it’s our duty to steer it toward productive outcomes." Economic anxieties also swirl around AI, with many fearing a speculative bubble. Valient draws a parallel to the dot‑com era: the internet didn’t disappear; the weak business models did.
He believes that solid products will survive regardless of market hype. "We’re focused on building a good engine. AI helps us iterate faster and dream bigger. Whether we’re in a bubble is unknown, but history shows useful technology endures." Funding for Immens remains modest.
The company has secured its "first commitments" but has not disclosed amounts, describing the target as "reasonable." Brussee cautions against excess capital: "Too much money can make a startup lazy; you lose the scrappy mindset that drives innovation." The team remains tiny—just the three founders plus a handful of helpers—by design. De Jong explains the trade‑off: a massive staff doesn’t guarantee success; a focused, small group can make deliberate decisions and iterate quickly. Yet they must also ensure enough resources to capture the narrow window of opportunity presented by AI’s rise. "It’s a balancing act between speed, talent, and funding," he says.
Immens is already working on a proof‑of‑concept demo that showcases a generative‑AI‑driven editing workflow. The goal is to release this demo within the month, a timeline that Brussee admits is moving faster than initially planned. "We expected to be ready by year‑end; we’re already two‑times ahead of that schedule," he remarks, highlighting the productivity boost the AI‑centric design delivers.
Business‑model discussions are still early. While Immens admires Epic Games’ revenue‑share philosophy—"we succeed when you succeed"—they have not committed to any specific model yet.
The founders remain open, waiting to see how the market reacts to their prototype. Ultimately, the trio hopes Immens will enable a new wave of artistic risk‑taking. "We love games as complex expressions of art. We want to see more creativity, more daring projects.
If our technology can help developers push boundaries, that would be amazing," Brussee concludes. In summary, Immens aims to reshape the game‑engine landscape by marrying AI’s reasoning capabilities with an open, extensible architecture. By giving developers granular control, encouraging interoperability, and keeping the organization lean, the founders hope to break the costly, monolithic cycle that has long plagued the industry and usher in a more innovative, accessible era for game creation.