Unity and Unreal have long held sway over the game‑development landscape, accounting for roughly 70% of the titles launched on Steam in 2025. While Godot has enjoyed a surge in popularity over recent years and some studios—such as Capcom with its RE Engine—continue to rely on proprietary solutions, the duopoly of Unity and Unreal still dominates the market. Enter Immens, a startup founded by three industry veterans—Arjan Brussee, Sjoerd De Jong, and Michal Valient—who believe there is still room for a fresh engine and, more importantly, for a better way to build games. Their résumés read like a who’s‑who of game development: experience at Epic Games (the creators of Unreal), Guerrilla Games, Boss Key, and even Apple.
Together they aim to challenge the status quo. In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Brussee argued that the timing is ripe for a new engine because “the tools that existed a couple of years ago simply aren’t enough anymore.” He sees AI‑assisted programming as a catalyst that can let developers start from a clean slate again. “With a lot of guidance and control, you can build something that delivers full functionality quickly,” he explained.
Valient, Immens’ chief technology officer, clarifies that the AI they are integrating is not the typical “prompt‑to‑output” gimmick that dominates headlines. Instead, the AI is woven into the engine’s architecture to make the codebase highly extensible. “AI can reason about massive amounts of data and source code,” he said.
“If we design the engine with that capability in mind, even solo developers or tiny teams can plug in custom systems—like a bespoke particle effect—without being limited to a narrow scripting layer.” This approach, he believes, will let creators extend the engine at a pace previously impossible. The motivation behind Immens is rooted in the current market climate, which Brussee describes as “rough.” Game development costs are spiralling, and the risk of investing years of work into a title that never recoups its budget is growing. “We need new ways of working, more efficient pipelines that let smaller teams ship faster and cheaper,” he said.
The goal is to break the cycle that forces studios to gamble their livelihoods on ever‑larger budgets. De Jong, the chief product officer, points out that the engine space has become overly standardized and consolidated. While that consolidation has produced a solid foundation, it also stifles innovation.
“The industry faces a slew of challenges, and simply repeating the old formula won’t cut it,” he warned. “What we need now is genuine innovation, not more of the same.” One of De Jong’s criticisms of existing engines is their monolithic nature. Developers are forced to adapt to proprietary file formats and rigid workflows.
By contrast, Immens aims to be a chameleon that reshapes itself around the developer’s needs. “Flexibility is key,” he said. “You should be able to swap components, append new ones, or even build entirely custom tools that match your personal workflow—down to the shortcuts, UI layout, and feature set you prefer.” Valient acknowledges that AI, while powerful, can quickly go off‑track if left unchecked. To mitigate this, Immens is built with transparency at its core.
Users will always see what the engine is doing, retain a full history of changes, and be able to reproduce results reliably. “When you need to generate five characters with a specific trait, you used to spend weeks planning and scripting.
Now you could sketch the idea over coffee, let the AI produce a draft, and iterate instantly. That level of speed used to be prohibitively expensive,” he noted. The architecture of Immens deliberately avoids imposing a single workflow.
“It’s up to you how much AI you want to use and where you apply it,” De Jong emphasized. The team is also committed to open standards, ensuring that assets stored as plain text can be read and manipulated by any tool.
“If you’re working in Blender, Maya, or a generative‑art pipeline, you should be able to plug those outputs directly into Immens because they all speak the same language,” Brussee explained. This openness, he believes, solves a long‑standing pain point where engines act as closed ecosystems that hinder interoperability.
There is a vocal backlash against AI in game development, often fueled by sensational claims that a single prompt could spawn a Grand‑Theft‑Auto‑level experience. Immens’ founders see such “click‑to‑game” fantasies as far‑off possibilities, but they stress that AI is fundamentally a tool—not a replacement for human creativity.
“AI makes everyone better, but the art still comes from people,” Valient said. “It has negative connotations now because it’s disrupting at a scale no one has seen before.” De Jong adds a note of responsibility: “We must use AI responsibly and productively.
Any tool can be misused; it’s up to us to guide its application.” Economic anxieties also swirl around AI, with some warning of a bubble. Valient draws a parallel to the dot‑com era: “The internet didn’t disappear after the bubble burst; the weak players fell, but the technology endured.
We’re focused on building a solid engine; AI simply accelerates our vision.” Funding remains modest. Immens has secured its “first commitments” but has not disclosed amounts, describing the target as “reasonable.” Brussee warns against over‑capitalization, noting that too much money can breed complacency. The company remains lean—just the three founders and a handful of helpers—by design.
“Building an engine is complex; you can’t throw a million developers at it and expect miracles,” De Jong said. “You need a small, focused team to make deliberate decisions and iterate quickly.” Immens is currently developing a proof‑of‑concept demo that showcases a generative‑AI‑driven editing workflow, slated for release later this month. The timeline has already outpaced their original estimate: “We thought we’d need until year‑end, but we’re two‑times faster than expected,” Brussee remarked. The business model is still evolving.
While they admire Epic’s “we succeed when you succeed” revenue share, they admit it’s too early to make definitive statements. Ultimately, Brussee hopes Immens will enable creators to push the medium forward. “We love games as an art form and want to see more risk‑taking and creativity.
If our technology can help bring that vision to life, that would be amazing.”