For many years, Unity and Unreal have ruled the game‑development landscape, together powering roughly 70 % of all Steam releases slated for 2025. While open‑source alternatives such as Godot have gained traction, and a handful of studios cling to proprietary tools like Capcom’s RE Engine, the market has largely settled into a duopoly. Against this backdrop, three industry veterans—Arjan Brussee, Sjoerd De Jong, and Michal Valient—have launched Immens with the conviction that a fresh, AI‑enhanced engine can still carve out a niche and raise the bar for how games are built.
The founders’ résumés read like a who’s‑who of modern game development. Brussee helped shape the original Unity engine, De Jong spent years at Guerrilla Games, and Valient’s background spans Epic Games, Apple, and the now‑defunct Boss Key. Their combined experience gives them a rare perspective on the strengths and blind spots of today’s dominant tools, and they see a clear opportunity to innovate where the status quo has grown complacent. In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Brussee argued that the timing is ripe for a new engine because “the possibilities that didn’t exist a couple of years ago are now within reach.” He points to AI‑assisted programming as a catalyst that can let developers start from a clean slate without having to wrestle with the massive, monolithic codebases that currently dominate the space.
“With guided, controllable AI, you can assemble a fully functional engine much faster than before,” he explained. Valient, Immens’s chief technology officer, stresses that the AI they employ is not a “prompt‑to‑asset” gimmick.
Instead, it is woven into the engine’s architecture to make the core codebase highly extensible. “AI can reason over large code graphs and data sets,” he said.
“If we design the engine with that capability in mind, even a solo developer can plug in a custom particle system or a bespoke animation pipeline without rewriting large sections of the engine.” In practice, this means the engine provides a scaffold that AI can help flesh out, while still giving creators full visibility and control over the generated code. The motivation behind Immens is also economic. Brussee describes the current development climate as “rough,” noting that production budgets keep inflating while the odds of commercial success shrink. “We need new workflows that lower costs and let smaller teams ship quality experiences quickly,” he said.
The trio believes that AI can compress the iteration loop, turning weeks‑long manual tasks into minutes‑long assisted ones, thereby reducing financial risk for studios and independent creators alike. De Jong, the chief product officer, observes that the engine market has become overly standardized and consolidated. While this has given developers a reliable foundation, it also stifles creative experimentation.
“The industry is at a crossroads,” he warned. “Continuing to do exactly what we’ve always done won’t solve the emerging challenges. We need genuine innovation, not just more of the same.” One of the pain points he highlights is the monolithic nature of existing engines. Developers often must conform to proprietary file formats and rigid pipelines, which hampers flexibility.
Immens aims to flip that script by making the engine adapt to the developer, not the other way around. “You should be able to swap modules, append new functionality, and build tools that match your personal workflow,” De Jong said.
“Imagine a UI that mirrors your own shortcuts, features, and interface preferences—everything tailored to the specific needs of your project.” Valient also cautions that AI, while powerful, can misbehave if left unchecked. Immens therefore embeds extensive audit trails and version‑control‑style histories so users always know what the AI did, why it did it, and can reproduce the results reliably. This transparency is crucial for creative pipelines where a designer might need to generate five unique characters with particular traits in a single morning, a task that previously could have taken weeks of manual labor. Flexibility is baked into Immens’s philosophy.
The engine does not enforce a single workflow; instead, it offers a modular architecture that lets teams decide how much AI assistance they want and where to apply it. De Jong stresses that the framework must be robust enough to support both AI‑heavy and AI‑light approaches, depending on the developer’s comfort level and project requirements. Interoperability is another cornerstone.
By embracing open, text‑based standards, Immens can communicate seamlessly with tools like Blender, Maya, or any generative‑AI pipeline. “When files are human‑readable, any system can parse them,” Brussee noted. “That openness lets us plug into the broader ecosystem without forcing developers into a closed‑door environment.” The broader conversation about AI in games is polarized. Some pundits hype “click‑to‑game” promises where a single prompt spawns a Grand‑Theft‑Auto‑scale world.
Immens’s team acknowledges that such extremes are far off, but they view AI as a catalyst that makes every developer better, not a replacement for human creativity. “AI is a tool, like any other technology,” Valient said.
“It can be misused, but it also has the potential to elevate the craft across the board.” Economic anxieties also swirl around the AI boom, with many fearing a bubble. Valient draws a parallel to the dot‑com era, noting that while many startups vanished, the underlying internet never disappeared.
“We’re focused on building a solid engine first. AI simply accelerates our development and expands our imagination.
Whether the market is in a bubble is unknown, but the technology itself isn’t going away.” Funding remains modest. Immens has secured its “first commitments” but has not disclosed amounts, preferring a lean operation over a cash‑rich but complacent one. Brussee jokes that excess capital can breed laziness, whereas scarcity forces scrappiness—a trait he believes is essential for innovative engineering.
Currently, Immens is a micro‑team of the three founders plus a handful of helpers. They are racing toward a proof‑of‑concept demo that showcases a generative‑AI‑driven editing workflow, slated for release within the month. The timeline has already outpaced their original estimate—what was projected to take a year is now on track for a few months—demonstrating the very speed gains they claim AI can deliver. The long‑term business model is still under discussion.
While they admire Epic Games’ “we succeed when you succeed” licensing philosophy, they acknowledge that concrete plans are premature. Ultimately, the trio hopes Immens will enable creators to push artistic boundaries, take risks, and deliver experiences that would have been impossible under today’s cost and time constraints. As Brussee summed up, “We love games, we love the art form, and we want to see more daring, more creative work.
If our engine helps make that happen, it would be amazing.”