For years, Unity and Unreal have reigned supreme in the game‑development arena, together accounting for roughly 70% of all titles launched on Steam in 2025. While open‑source options like Godot have gained traction and some studios cling to proprietary solutions—Capcom’s RE Engine being a notable example—the duopoly of Unity and Unreal still dominates the market.
Enter Immens, a fledgling venture founded by three seasoned industry veterans: Arjan Brussee, Sjoerd De Jong, and Michal Valient. Their résumés read like a who’s‑who of game‑tech powerhouses, spanning Epic Games (the creators of Unreal), Guerrilla Games, Boss Key, and even Apple. The trio believes the current engine landscape, despite its maturity, still leaves room for meaningful innovation.
In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Brussee argued that “the moment is ripe for a new engine that simply didn’t exist a few years ago.” He pointed to the rapid advances in AI‑assisted programming as a catalyst that could let developers start from a clean slate again, delivering full‑featured tools much faster than traditional pipelines. Valient, Immens’ chief technology officer, clarified that the AI they envision is not the flashy, prompt‑to‑image gimmick that dominates headlines. Instead, he described a system where AI is woven into the engine’s architecture to make it highly extensible. “If we design the codebase with AI in mind, even a solo developer can plug in a custom particle system or a bespoke animation tool without wrestling with opaque scripting layers,” he explained.
This approach aims to let creators extend the engine quickly, leveraging AI’s capacity to understand large codebases and data sets. The motivation behind Immens stems from a bleak market reality that Brussee calls “rough.” Game development costs have ballooned, making it increasingly difficult for small teams to break even.
“We need new ways of working—more efficient processes that shrink budgets, reduce staff requirements, and accelerate timelines—so studios aren’t gambling their livelihoods on a single title,” he warned. De Jong, the chief product officer, observes that the engine space has become overly standardized and consolidated. While this has provided a solid foundation, he argues that the industry now needs genuine innovation, not just incremental refinements. He criticizes current engines for their monolithic nature, forcing developers to adapt to proprietary file formats and rigid workflows.
With AI, Immens aims to flip that script, delivering an engine that molds itself to the developer’s needs. “Flexibility is key,” De Jong said.
“You should be able to swap components, append new modules, or build entirely custom tools that match your personal workflow—down to shortcuts, UI layout, and feature sets.” This level of customization, he believes, will empower creators to craft tools that fit their unique project requirements rather than the other way around. Valient also warned that AI, while powerful, can veer off course if left unchecked.
Immens therefore emphasizes transparency and control: users will always see what the engine is doing, retain a full history of changes, and be able to reproduce results reliably. He illustrated this with a hypothetical scenario: instead of spending weeks designing five characters with a specific trait, a developer could generate them in a coffee‑break, reuse the tool a handful of times, and discard it afterward—dramatically cutting cost. The platform’s architecture deliberately avoids imposing a single workflow.
De Jong stressed that the framework is designed to let teams decide how much AI to incorporate and where. “You choose the balance between manual control and AI assistance, but the engine must understand your intent correctly,” he noted. Interoperability is another pillar of Immens’ design. By embracing open, text‑based standards, the engine can seamlessly exchange data with tools like Blender, Maya, or other generative pipelines.
Brussee highlighted that when files are human‑readable, AI can parse and manipulate them, enabling smarter interfaces across the entire development stack. This openness contrasts with many proprietary engines that act as closed ecosystems, hindering smooth integration. The broader AI debate in game development is polarized. Some commentators on LinkedIn hype “click‑to‑game” engines that could spawn Grand Theft Auto‑scale experiences from a single prompt.
Immens acknowledges that such a vision might one day materialize, but they view AI primarily as an accelerator—a tool that makes developers better, not a replacement for human creativity. Valient observed, “AI is disrupting at a scale we’ve never seen, which creates fear, but it also lifts the whole industry.” Economic concerns also swirl around the AI boom, with fears of a speculative 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 building a solid engine; AI simply helps us iterate faster and dream bigger.” Funding remains modest.
Immens has secured its “first commitments,” though the exact amount is undisclosed and described as “reasonable.” Brussee cautioned against over‑capitalization, noting that excess cash can breed complacency, whereas a lean budget forces scrappiness and focus. The team itself is tiny—just the three founders plus a handful of helpers.
De Jong explained that building an engine is a complex undertaking that doesn’t benefit from a massive workforce; a small, focused group can make critical decisions and iterate quickly. Timing is also crucial: the convergence of AI advances and industry fatigue creates a narrow window to capture market attention. Immens is currently racing toward a proof‑of‑concept demo that showcases a generative‑AI‑driven editing workflow.
The goal is to release the demo within the month, a timeline that Brussee says is already twice as fast as initially projected when they started in April. Regarding the business model, Brussee admires Epic’s “we succeed when you succeed” philosophy but admits it’s too early to commit to a specific revenue structure.
Ultimately, the founders hope Immens will empower creators to push the boundaries of interactive art, fostering more risk‑taking and innovative experiences. As Brussee concluded, “We love games, we love their artistic complexity, and we want to see more creativity.
If our technology can help make that happen, that would be amazing.”