The Next Game Engine Won't Have a Manual — Arturo Nunez, Nereu
Aug 18, 2026 · 19:33
Arturo Nunez, creator of the AI-assisted game engine Nereu, argues the next game engine won't have a manual: instead of coding, users describe intent. Drawing on a decade at Unity, he built Nereu around an asset tag system (ATS) inspired by Entity Component System, where everything is an asset tagged with intent (e.g. character, animated, double jump) and systems query tags—so a building can be tagged drivable and dropped into a Mario Kart race. The assistant, Bibi, helps users get unstuck rather than one-shot finished games, and context is assembled using level of detail: assets near the edited object get full tag values, distant ones collapse to position and type, and hundreds of grass pieces are omitted. Nereu also uses vision models to tag 6,000–7,000 assets, runs in the browser with JavaScript, and is in closed alpha. Nunez contrasts this with world models, which he says remain far from real-time 4K 60 fps games.
