For years, the game‑development landscape has been dominated by two heavyweight engines: Unity and Unreal. By 2025, roughly seventy percent of all titles released on Steam were built with one of those platforms.
While the open‑source Godot engine has gained traction, most large studios still cling to proprietary solutions—Capcom relies on its in‑house RE Engine, for example—leaving Unity and Unreal with an almost unchallenged market share. 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 a fresh, more adaptable engine.
Their résumés read like a who's‑who of game‑tech history: experience at Epic Games (the creators of Unreal), Guerrilla Games, Boss Key, and even Apple. Together they aim to carve out a niche by marrying a modern, extensible architecture with AI‑assisted development tools. In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Brussee explained that the timing feels right for a new engine. "A few years ago, the idea of an AI‑enhanced engine simply wasn’t feasible," he said.
"Now, with AI‑supported programming, we can start building from scratch again, under tight guidance, and get full‑featured systems up quickly." Valient, Immens’s chief technology officer, clarified that the AI they are employing is not the flashy, prompt‑to‑image kind that dominates headlines. "Our AI is baked into the engine’s design so it can reason about the codebase and data efficiently," he noted. "That means smaller teams—or even solo developers—can extend the engine beyond simple scripting. If a developer wants a custom particle system, they can plug it in directly.
AI helps them do that faster, but the core work remains under the developer’s control." The motivation behind Immens’s AI‑centric approach is the increasingly hostile economics of game production. Brussee described the current climate as "rough" and warned that development costs are spiralling. "Games are getting more expensive, and the risk to studios is growing," he said.
"We need new workflows that cut costs, shrink team sizes, and accelerate timelines, so creators aren’t forced to gamble their livelihoods on a single hit." De Jong, the chief product officer, observed that the engine market has entered a phase of "standardisation and consolidation." While that has given developers a solid foundation, it also stifles innovation. "Continuing to do exactly what we’ve always done won’t solve the challenges we face," he argued. "What the industry needs now is genuine innovation, not more of the same." One of the biggest complaints about existing engines is their monolithic nature.
Developers must adapt to proprietary file formats and rigid pipelines, which can be a barrier to creativity. De Jong believes AI can flip that script by making the engine pliable. "You should be able to swap components, append new modules, or rewrite tools to match your workflow," he said. "Imagine a designer who can craft a custom interface, shortcuts, and features that fit their team’s exact needs, and have the engine understand and support those changes seamlessly." Valient acknowledges that AI is a double‑edged sword.
While it offers powerful assistance, it can also produce unexpected results if left unchecked. "We’re building Immens so that the user remains in the driver’s seat," he explained.
"You can see exactly what the engine is doing, trace its history, and reproduce results reliably. This transparency lets you create bespoke tools for specific problems—like generating five characters with a unique trait—in minutes instead of weeks." Flexibility is baked into Immens from the ground up. The architecture does not enforce a single workflow; instead, it provides a framework that developers can shape.
"You decide how much AI to involve and where," De Jong said. "Our job is to make sure the AI interprets your intentions correctly, but the ultimate direction is yours." Interoperability is another pillar of Immens’s design philosophy. By adopting open, text‑based standards, the engine can communicate with a wide range of third‑party tools such as Blender, Maya, or any generative‑art software.
"When files are plain text, any program can read and modify them," Brussee pointed out. "That means the AI can parse project assets, adjust them, and keep everything in sync without proprietary lock‑in. This openness is something many current engines lack." The broader conversation about AI in game development is often polarized.
Some critics warn of a future where a single prompt can spawn a Grand Theft Auto‑scale experience, reducing the craft to a click‑to‑play button. Immens’s founders see that vision as a distant possibility, but they stress that AI should be treated as a tool, not a replacement for human creativity. "AI will make everyone better, not take over the art," Valient asserted. "It’s disruptive now, but that disruption is what will drive the next wave of innovation." Economic anxieties also swirl around AI, with many questioning whether the hype has inflated valuations into a bubble.
Valient draws a parallel to the dot‑com era: "The internet didn’t disappear when the bubble burst; many companies fell, but the technology endured. We’re focused on building a solid engine; AI simply accelerates our development and expands our imagination.
Whether it’s a bubble is unknown, but the underlying tech isn’t going away." Funding for Immens remains modest at this stage. The founders have secured initial commitments but have not disclosed exact figures, describing the amount as "reasonable." Brussee cautioned against over‑funding, noting that excess capital can breed complacency. "Startups need to stay scrappy," he laughed.
"Too much money can make you lazy." The team itself is intentionally lean—just the three founders and a handful of helpers. De Jong explained that building an engine is a complex, iterative process that benefits from a small, focused group rather than a massive workforce. "You need a tight core to make critical decisions and iterate quickly," he said. "At the same time, you must time your growth to capture the market window created by AI’s rise.
Balancing those forces is the challenge we’re navigating." Immens is currently racing toward a proof‑of‑concept demo that showcases a full editing workflow powered by generative AI. The team aims to release the demo within the month, a timeline that has already outpaced their original estimate of year‑end delivery. "We thought we’d need until December, but we’re two‑times faster than expected," Brussee reported. "Predicting exact schedules is hard, but the speed gains validate our AI‑first approach." Business‑model discussions are still early.
While Immens admires Epic Games’ revenue‑share model—"we succeed when you succeed"—they have not committed to any specific arrangement yet. The founders remain open to various monetisation strategies that align with their mission of empowering creators. Ultimately, the trio hopes Immens will enable developers to push the boundaries of interactive art. "We love games and want to see more daring, expressive experiences," Brussee concluded.
"If our engine helps studios take bigger creative risks and innovate, that would be amazing."