For years, Unity and Unreal have been the de‑facto platforms for creating video games, together accounting for roughly seventy percent of all titles released on Steam in 2025. While the open‑source Godot engine has been gaining traction, most large publishers still cling to proprietary solutions such as Capcom’s RE Engine, leaving the market heavily skewed toward the two giants. Against this backdrop, three seasoned industry veterans—Arjan Brussee, Sjoerd De Jong, and Michal Valient—have launched Immens, a new venture that believes there is still room for a fresh game engine and, more importantly, a better way to build it.
Their résumés read like a who’s‑who of modern game development, featuring stints at Epic Games (the creators of Unreal), Guerrilla Games, Boss Key, and even Apple. The trio now aims to challenge the status quo with an engine that leans heavily on artificial intelligence to streamline workflow and lower barriers for small teams. 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 argues that AI‑augmented programming can revive the spirit of building tools from the ground up, offering developers rapid access to full‑featured functionality without the long, resource‑intensive development cycles that have become the norm. Valient, Immens’s chief technology officer, is quick to clarify that the company’s use of AI is not about “prompt‑to‑code” gimmicks.
Instead, he describes a more structural approach: the AI is designed to understand and reason about the engine’s codebase, making it highly extensible. “If we design the code base with this in mind, even a solo developer can add a custom particle system or a bespoke physics module without wrestling with opaque scripting layers,” he says. The goal is to let creators focus on their vision while the AI handles the repetitive, boilerplate aspects of engine extension.
The motivation behind Immens is rooted in the harsh economic realities of modern game development. Brussee paints a bleak picture: “It’s really hard to be successful making games. Costs keep rising, and you need a new way to break out of that cycle.” He envisions a future where smaller studios can produce high‑quality experiences faster and with fewer resources, reducing the financial risk that currently threatens many independent studios.
De Jong, the chief product officer, points out that the engine market has become overly standardized and consolidated. While this has provided a stable foundation, he argues that the industry now needs genuine innovation rather than incremental improvements. “We’re at a point where continuing to do things the way we always have isn’t enough.
We need a different approach,” he asserts. One of the key criticisms De Jong levels at existing engines is their monolithic nature.
Developers are forced to adapt to proprietary file formats and rigid pipelines, limiting creativity. With AI, Immens aims to flip that dynamic, delivering an engine that molds itself to the developer’s workflow. “It needs to be very flexible,” he explains.
“You should be able to swap components, append new tools, and create interfaces that match exactly what your team needs.” This flexibility extends to the user interface, shortcuts, and even the underlying architecture, allowing each project to craft a personalized development environment. Valient acknowledges that AI is a double‑edged sword. While its capabilities are impressive, the technology can quickly go off‑track if left unchecked. To mitigate this, Immens is built around transparency and control.
Users can see the engine’s decision history, ensuring repeatable results and allowing them to intervene when the AI diverges from intended behavior. This level of oversight is crucial for creative tasks such as generating multiple character variants with specific traits—a process that previously might have taken weeks but could now be prototyped over a coffee break.
Flexibility is baked into Immens’s architecture. De Jong emphasizes that the engine does not enforce a single workflow; instead, it provides a modular framework where developers decide how much AI assistance they want and where to apply it.
The emphasis on open standards further enhances interoperability. “When files are text‑based, any tool can read them,” Brussee notes. This openness means that popular 3D packages like Blender or Maya, as well as emerging generative tools, can plug directly into the engine without cumbersome conversion steps. The broader industry conversation around AI in game development is polarized.
Some commentators on platforms like LinkedIn hype the prospect of “click‑to‑game” engines that can conjure Grand Theft Auto‑scale worlds from a single prompt. Immens’s team is more measured.
While they acknowledge that such radical automation could eventually be feasible, they view AI primarily as a productivity enhancer—a tool that makes developers better, not a replacement for human creativity. Valient remarks, “Big games and everything in between will be made because AI made everybody better.” Economic anxieties also swirl around the AI boom, with many fearing a bubble of over‑valued startups. Valient draws a parallel to the dot‑com era, noting that while many companies vanished, the underlying technology— the internet— persisted and flourished.
He believes Immens is focusing on building a solid, useful product rather than chasing hype. “We’re first and foremost making a good engine. AI helps us move faster and dream bigger, but the core is still solid engineering.” Funding remains modest. Immens has secured its “first commitments” but has not disclosed exact figures, describing the amount as “reasonable.” Brussee warns against excessive capital, suggesting that too much money can breed complacency.
The company deliberately remains lean, consisting of the three founders and a handful of auxiliary contributors. This small size, according to De Jong, is strategic: building an engine is complex and benefits from focused decision‑making rather than a massive, unwieldy team.
Immens is currently racing toward a proof‑of‑concept demo that showcases a generative‑AI‑driven editing workflow. The team originally projected a year‑long development timeline but has already accelerated to a launch within months, a testament to the speed gains they claim AI provides. As for the business model, Brussee hints that Immens admires Epic Games’ “we succeed when you succeed” licensing philosophy, but he concedes that it’s too early to lock in specifics. Ultimately, the founders hope their engine will empower creators to push the medium forward, fostering more risk‑taking, artistic expression, and innovation.
“We love games and want to see more creativity and risk‑taking,” Brussee says. “If our technology helps make that possible, that would be amazing.”