Three Epic Games Veterans Are Building an AI-Powered Game Engine to Challenge Unity and Unreal

Immens Aims to Rethink How Games Are Built With AI

Unity and Unreal Engine have long dominated the game development landscape, powering a significant share of games released across major platforms. However, three experienced developers believe the industry is ready for a different approach.

Arjan Brussee, Sjoerd De Jong, and Michal Valient — veterans of Epic Games, Guerrilla Games, Boss Key, and Apple — have founded Immens, a new game engine focused on combining flexible development tools with AI-assisted workflows.

The team's goal isn't simply to create games through text prompts. Instead, Immens is being designed around the idea that AI can help developers extend, customize, and improve the engine itself, allowing smaller teams to build sophisticated tools without the resources traditionally required.

According to Immens CTO Michal Valient, the engine will allow developers to work directly with its codebase and create custom systems, such as specialized particle systems or project-specific development tools. AI would then help developers understand and extend those systems more efficiently.

Breaking Away From the Traditional Engine Model

The founders believe the current game-engine landscape has become increasingly standardized and consolidated. While that has created reliable foundations for developers, they argue that modern development requires greater flexibility.

Rather than forcing teams to adapt their workflows around a fixed engine architecture, Immens aims to make the technology adaptable to individual projects.

Developers could potentially create their own interfaces, shortcuts, tools, and workflows based on the needs of their teams. The engine is also being designed around open standards, allowing it to communicate more easily with external software such as Blender, Maya, and other development tools.

This interoperability could become one of Immens' major selling points, particularly for smaller studios that rely on multiple applications throughout production.

AI as a Development Tool, Not a Replacement for Developers

Immens is also attempting to distance itself from the idea of fully automated, prompt-generated games.

The founders acknowledge that AI can be powerful but unpredictable, particularly when developers don't have sufficient control over how systems are generated or modified. Their approach focuses on making AI-assisted development transparent, repeatable, and controllable.

Instead of asking AI to create an entire game, developers could use it to build temporary tools, automate repetitive tasks, customize workflows, or solve specific production problems.

This could significantly reduce the time traditionally required for specialized development work. A tool that once required weeks of engineering could potentially be created and used within a much shorter timeframe.

Targeting the Rising Cost of Game Development

The motivation behind Immens also comes from growing concerns about the economics of modern game development.

As games become increasingly expensive and complex to produce, smaller studios face greater financial risks. Immens believes AI-assisted workflows could help teams reduce development costs while allowing fewer developers to accomplish more.

The founders argue that the industry needs to move beyond simply increasing team sizes and budgets. Instead, they want to explore development methods that enable smaller teams to experiment, take creative risks, and produce ambitious projects without the same financial pressure.

A Flexible Engine Built Around Open Standards

Immens is still in its early stages, but flexibility appears to be one of its core principles.

The engine is being designed to avoid locking developers into a single workflow. Teams will reportedly be able to decide how much AI they use and where it fits into their production process.

Its focus on open standards could also make it easier to move assets and information between different tools. The founders believe this could address some of the interoperability problems that have historically existed between game engines and external development software.

Immens Is Still in the Early Stages

The company currently remains extremely small, consisting primarily of its three founders and a handful of additional contributors.

Immens has received its first funding commitments but has not publicly revealed the amount of investment it is seeking or its final business model.

The team is currently developing a proof of concept demonstrating how generative AI could be integrated into the editing workflow. The founders say development has progressed significantly faster than originally anticipated, although they remain cautious about making firm timelines.

Rather than betting everything on the current AI boom, Immens says its priority is building a genuinely capable game engine first, with AI serving as an important technology that can make the engine more adaptable and future-ready.

If successful, Immens could give independent developers and smaller studios another option in a market historically dominated by a handful of major game engines.

Source: Gamesindustry

Expert Insights

GamesDapp, a leading game development company, sees Immens’ approach as a shift from AI-driven content generation toward smarter, end-to-end development workflows.

The biggest opportunity is helping smaller teams prototype faster, create custom tools, and reduce repetitive work while maintaining creative control.

As AI-powered engines evolve, the real advantage may come not from making games faster, but from enabling more distinctive, scalable, and player-focused experiences.