For years, Unity and Unreal have been the go‑to tools for game creators, powering roughly 70 % of all Steam releases slated for 2025. While open‑source alternatives like Godot have gained traction, most large studios still cling to proprietary solutions—Capcom’s RE Engine being a prime example. The dominance of Unity and Unreal has made the engine market feel almost closed.
Enter Immens, a new venture founded by three industry veterans—Arjan Brussee, Sjoerd De Jong, and Michal Valient—who believe there is still room for a fresh, more adaptable engine. Their résumés read like a who's‑who of game development: experience at Epic Games (the makers of Unreal), Guerrilla Games, Boss Key, and even Apple. Together they aim to challenge the status quo. In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Brussee explained that the timing feels right for a new engine, noting that “a few years ago this simply wasn’t possible.” He points to AI‑assisted programming as a catalyst that lets developers start from a clean slate again.
With the right guidance, he says, teams can achieve full functionality at a much faster pace. Valient, Immens’s chief technology officer, clarifies that the AI they employ isn’t the “prompt‑to‑art” kind that dominates headlines.
Instead, their AI is woven into the engine’s architecture to make it highly extensible. “AI can reason over large codebases and data sets,” he says. “If we design the engine with that in mind, even a solo developer can plug in a custom particle system or any other feature without being limited to a tiny scripting layer.” The goal is to let creators extend the engine quickly, using AI as a productivity booster rather than a magical shortcut.
The motivation behind Immens is rooted in the current market reality, which Brussee describes as “rough.” Game development costs keep climbing, making it harder for small teams to survive. He asks whether new workflows could break this cycle, allowing studios to produce games faster, with fewer people, and on tighter budgets—thereby reducing financial risk for creators and their companies. De Jong, the chief product officer, observes that the engine landscape has become overly standardized and consolidated. While that standardization provides a solid base, the industry now faces challenges that demand innovation, not more of the same.
He criticizes the “monolithic approach” of existing engines, where developers must adapt to proprietary file formats and rigid pipelines. With AI, Immens aims to deliver an engine that bends to the user’s needs, offering interchangeable modules, appendable components, and the ability to craft bespoke tools tailored to a team’s workflow.
Flexibility is a recurring theme. De Jong envisions a system where a developer can build exactly the interface, shortcuts, and features they require—essentially a personalized development environment. Valient acknowledges AI’s power but warns that it can quickly go off‑track if left unchecked. To mitigate this, Immens is designed to keep users in full control, providing transparency about what the AI is doing, its decision history, and ensuring repeatable outcomes.
He illustrates the impact with a concrete example: creating five characters with a specific trait used to take weeks of planning and coding. With AI‑augmented tools, a developer could sketch the concept over coffee, generate the assets, and iterate instantly, then discard the temporary tool once the job is done. This dramatically reduces cost and time, turning what was once a budget‑draining process into a lightweight, on‑demand workflow.
Immens does not force any particular pipeline on its users. De Jong stresses that the framework is deliberately open‑ended, letting teams decide how much AI to incorporate and where. The engine also embraces open standards, meaning files are stored in text‑based formats that any compatible software can read.
Brussee explains that this openness allows seamless integration with tools like Blender, Maya, or other generative applications, creating a “smarter interface” across the entire development stack. The broader AI conversation in gaming is polarized.
Some pundits on LinkedIn hype the idea of “click‑to‑game” engines that could produce GTA‑scale experiences from a single prompt. Immens acknowledges that such a future might someday be possible, but they view AI primarily as an empowering tool, not a replacement for human creativity.
Valient believes AI will make developers better, even if it currently carries negative connotations due to its disruptive scale. Economic concerns also surface, with many questioning whether the AI boom is a bubble. Valient draws a parallel to the dot‑com era: the internet didn’t disappear, but many over‑valued companies fell away, leaving the solid, useful technologies behind.
Immens is focused on building a genuinely good engine; AI simply accelerates their vision and enables more ambitious dreaming. Funding remains modest.
The founders have secured “first commitments” but have not disclosed amounts, describing the target as “reasonable.” Brussee warns against excessive capital, noting that too much money can breed complacency and reduce the scrappy mindset essential for a startup. The team itself is tiny—just the three founders plus a handful of helpers—by design.
De Jong explains that engine development is complex and cannot be rushed by throwing a large crew at it. Instead, a small, focused group can make deliberate decisions and iterate thoughtfully, especially given the narrow window of opportunity presented by the AI wave.
Immens is currently building 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 expectations; what they thought would take until year‑end is now arriving in half that time. Regarding the business model, Brussee admires Epic’s “we succeed when you succeed” approach but says it’s too early to commit to a specific revenue strategy. Ultimately, his hope is that Immens will enable creators to push the artistic and technical boundaries of games, fostering more risk‑taking and innovation in the medium.
"We love games and want to see more creativity," he says. "If our technology helps bring that to life, that would be amazing."