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 open‑source alternatives such as Godot have enjoyed a surge of interest, the market remains largely locked into the proprietary solutions of the major studios—Capcom’s RE Engine being a prime example. Yet three seasoned veterans—Arjan Brussee, Sjoerd De Jong, and Michal Valient—believe there is still room for a fresh, more adaptable engine. Their new venture, Immens, aims to combine cutting‑edge AI assistance with a highly extensible architecture, offering smaller teams a way to break free from the costly, monolithic pipelines that have become the norm. The trio’s résumés read like a who’s‑who of the industry.
Brussee spent years at Epic Games, the creator of Unreal, and later helped shape titles at Guerrilla Games and Boss Key. De Jong’s background includes senior roles at Apple and several AAA studios, while Valient brings deep technical expertise from his time at Epic and other high‑profile projects. Together they see an opportunity that didn’t exist just a few years ago: an engine built from the ground up with AI‑enhanced programming at its core. In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Brussee explained that the timing feels right.
"There’s an opportunity now to build a new engine that didn’t exist a couple of years ago," he said. "With AI‑supported programming you can start creating from scratch again, under tight guidance, and bring full functionality to life much faster." Valient, Immens’ chief technology officer, clarified that the AI they are employing is not the kind that simply generates assets from a prompt.
"Our AI is about constructing an engine that is fundamentally extensible," he noted. "Because AI can reason over massive codebases and data, we design the underlying architecture to let individuals or small teams add custom systems—like a bespoke particle engine—without being confined to a limited scripting layer.
The goal is to let developers extend the engine quickly and safely." The motivation behind Immens is also economic. Brussee described the current market as "rough" and warned that development costs are spiralling. "It’s getting ever more expensive to make games.
We need new ways of working that reduce cost, shrink team size, and accelerate timelines, so studios aren’t risking their entire livelihood on a single project," he said. De Jong, the chief product officer, added that the engine space has become overly standardized and consolidated. While that consolidation has provided a stable foundation, it also stifles innovation.
"We’re at a point where the industry faces many challenges, and simply repeating past practices isn’t enough. We need real innovation, not just more of the same," he asserted. He criticized the "monolithic approach" of existing engines, where developers must adapt to proprietary file formats and rigid workflows. With AI, Immens intends to deliver an engine that molds itself to the developer’s needs.
Flexibility is a cornerstone of Immens’ design philosophy. De Jong explained, "You should be able to swap components, append new ones, modify existing tools, and build custom interfaces that match exactly what your project demands. For me, that means creating tools with the shortcuts, features, and UI that my team finds most efficient." Valient also warned that AI, while powerful, can quickly go off‑track if left unchecked.
To mitigate this, Immens gives users full visibility into the engine’s actions. "When you use the engine you know what it’s doing, you can trace its history, and you can reproduce results reliably," he said. This transparency enables developers to craft bespoke tools for specific problems—such as generating five characters with a unique trait—in a matter of minutes rather than weeks, dramatically lowering the cost of iteration.
Immens does not impose a single workflow. De Jong emphasized that the framework is deliberately agnostic: "It’s up to you how you want to use it, and how much AI you want to incorporate. The architecture is set up so you can decide where AI fits into your pipeline, while ensuring the AI understands the context correctly." Interoperability is another priority.
By embracing open, text‑based standards, Immens aims to speak the same language as tools like Blender, Maya, and other generative platforms. "When files are text‑based, any program can read them. The AI can parse those files and act on them, making integration seamless," Brussee explained. He noted that many current engines act as closed ecosystems, hindering smooth data exchange.
Immens seeks to break that barrier, allowing developers to plug in third‑party software without cumbersome conversion steps. The broader conversation about AI in game development is polarized. Some commentators on LinkedIn hype the idea of "click‑to‑game" engines that could produce Grand Theft Auto‑scale experiences from a single prompt. Immens’ founders acknowledge that such a vision may someday be feasible, but they stress that AI should be viewed as a tool, not a replacement for human creativity.
"AI makes everyone better, not a magic button that creates a finished game," Valient said. "It’s a disruptive technology, and that disruption can feel uncomfortable, but it also opens new possibilities." Economic anxieties also swirl around the AI boom, with worries about inflated valuations and a potential bubble. Valient compared the situation to the dot‑com era: "The internet didn’t disappear after the bubble burst; many companies fell away, but the underlying technology endured. We’re focused on building a solid engine that leverages AI to accelerate development, regardless of market hype." Funding for Immens remains modest and deliberately restrained.
The founders have secured "first commitments" but have not disclosed exact figures, describing the amount as "reasonable." Brussee cautioned against excessive capital, noting that too much money can breed complacency. "Startups that are overly funded often become lazy; we want to stay scrappy and focused," he laughed. The team is currently very small—just the three founders plus a handful of helpers. This lean structure is intentional, as De Jong explained: "Building an engine is complex; you can’t throw a million engineers at it and expect success.
A small, focused group can make deliberate decisions and iterate faster. At the same time, we must time our effort to capture the window of opportunity presented by AI’s rise. It’s a delicate balance." Immens is now working toward a proof‑of‑concept demo that showcases a generative‑AI‑driven editing workflow. The goal is to release this demo within the month, demonstrating how quickly developers can iterate on content.
Brussee noted that the project’s timeline has already outpaced their original expectations: "When we started in April we thought we’d be at the end of the year. We’re already twice as fast as we anticipated." Business‑model discussions are still in early stages. While Immens admires Epic’s "we succeed when you succeed" licensing approach, they have not committed to a specific model yet.
Brussee said the team will decide once the technology matures and the market signals become clearer. Ultimately, the founders hope Immens will empower creators to push the boundaries of interactive entertainment.
"We love games and want to see more daring, artistic expression. If our engine can lower barriers and spark innovation, that would be amazing," Brussee concluded.