For years, Unity and Unreal have been the go‑to tools for game creators, together accounting for roughly 70 % of the titles that appeared on Steam in 2025. While Godot has enjoyed a surge in popularity and some studios cling to proprietary solutions such as Capcom’s RE Engine, the market has largely been a duopoly. Against this backdrop, three seasoned developers—Arjan Brussee, Sjoerd De Jong, and Michal Valient—have founded Immens, a startup that believes there is still room for a fresh, more adaptable engine. The trio’s résumés read like a who’s‑who of the industry: experience at Epic Games (the creators of Unreal), Guerrilla Games, Boss Key, and even Apple.
Their combined background gives them a unique perspective on the shortcomings of existing tools and the opportunities that modern AI brings. In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Brussee explained that the timing feels right for a new engine because "the technology that didn’t exist a couple of years ago is now mature enough to be useful." According to Brussee, AI‑assisted programming can let developers start from a clean slate while still benefiting from extensive guidance and control. "You can build something functional quickly when the engine is designed to let AI reason about the codebase and data," he said. Valient, Immens’ chief technology officer, clarified that the AI they are integrating is not about prompting a system to conjure assets out of thin air.
Instead, it is meant to make the engine itself highly extensible. "If we design the underlying architecture with AI in mind, even a solo developer can add a custom particle system or a bespoke gameplay mechanic without having to wrestle with rigid scripting constraints," he explained.
The motivation behind Immens is also economic. Brussee described the current climate as "rough" for developers: production costs keep climbing, and studios are forced to take ever‑greater financial risks. He argued that a new workflow—one that leverages AI to automate repetitive tasks—could lower budgets, shrink team sizes, and shorten development cycles, thereby reducing the existential threat many indie studios face. De Jong, the chief product officer, pointed out that the engine market has become overly standardized and consolidated.
While this has provided a solid foundation, he believes the industry now needs genuine innovation rather than more of the same. He criticized the "monolithic approach" of existing engines, where developers must conform to proprietary file formats and rigid pipelines. With AI, Immens aims to flip that dynamic, allowing the engine to adapt to the developer’s needs instead of the other way around. Flexibility is a core design principle.
De Jong envisions a system where users can swap, append, or modify components at will, creating tools that match their personal workflow. "Imagine being able to craft an interface with exactly the shortcuts, features, and layout that suit your team’s project. That level of customization is what we want to enable," he said.
Valient also warned that AI, while powerful, can "go off the rails" if left unchecked. Immens therefore places the user in full control of the AI’s actions, providing transparent histories and repeatable processes.
He illustrated this with a hypothetical scenario: instead of spending weeks designing five characters with a specific trait, a developer could generate them quickly, test the result, and discard the tool afterward—something that would have been prohibitively expensive in the past. The engine’s architecture is deliberately agnostic. It does not enforce a single workflow or prescribe how much AI should be used; developers decide where AI fits into their pipeline.
Moreover, Immens is built around open standards and text‑based file formats, making it easy to interoperate with tools like Blender, Maya, or other generative systems. "When files are human‑readable, any AI can parse them, and any third‑party software can exchange data seamlessly," Brussee noted.
This openness contrasts with many proprietary engines that act as closed ecosystems, hindering cross‑tool collaboration. Public sentiment about AI in game development is mixed. Some commentators hype the idea of "click‑to‑game" experiences, suggesting that a single prompt could spawn a Grand Theft Auto‑scale world.
Immens’ team tempers such expectations, emphasizing that AI is a tool to augment creativity, not a replacement for human design. Valient believes AI will make developers better, even if the technology currently carries a negative stigma due to its disruptive potential. Economic anxieties also swirl around AI, with worries that the sector is a bubble. Valient draws a parallel to the dot‑com era, noting that while many companies vanished, the underlying internet survived and flourished.
"AI isn’t going away; it’s the same as the internet—some ventures will fail, but the technology will persist and improve," he said. Funding for Immens remains modest. The founders have secured "first commitments" but have not disclosed amounts, describing the target as "reasonable". Brussee cautioned against excessive capital, arguing that too much money can breed complacency and reduce the scrappy mindset needed for a startup.
The company remains tiny—just the three founders plus a handful of helpers—by design. De Jong explained that building an engine is a complex undertaking that does not benefit from a massive headcount; a focused team can make thoughtful decisions and iterate faster.
At the same time, they recognize a limited window of opportunity as AI reshapes the industry, and they are balancing resources to hit that sweet spot. Immens is currently developing a proof‑of‑concept demo that showcases an editing workflow powered by generative AI.
The goal is to release the demo within the month, a timeline that Brussee says is already twice as fast as initially projected when the project began in April. While the business model is still under discussion, Brussee expressed admiration for Epic’s "we succeed when you succeed" licensing approach, though he admitted it is too early to commit to any specific arrangement.
Ultimately, the founders hope Immens will enable creators to push the boundaries of the medium. "We love games and want to see more daring, artistic expressions," Brussee concluded.
"If our technology can lower the barriers and inspire risk‑taking, that would be amazing for the whole industry."