đź‘‹ Hey Itch.io Community! We wanted to share an exciting update and get some feedback on where to go next:
We’re a small team of ex-AAA devs and AI nerds building Sapient — a native Unreal tool that helps small teams prototype, iterate, and build gameplay mechanics 10x faster. After spending 10+ years coding the same gameplay systems over and over, countless hours debugging cascading bugs, endless hours filtering through dependencies and searching through technical docs, we wanted to see what was possible within the core gameplay loop if we embedded AI directly into game engines. We’re super early, but Sapient is our attempt to build something that actually helps devs build real gameplay mechanics in fractions of the time and cost.
đź’¬ Feedback & Help Needed:
We want to make sure Sapient solves problems that actually matter to developers. We'd love some feedback to help us determine where to go next:
* If Sapient could help accelerate one part of your workflow/iteration loop, what would it be?
* What’s the last gameplay feature or system you backlogged because it took too long or was too complex to build?
đź’Ą Why folks are excited:
Unreal powers the best games—but steep learning curves and tiny blockers can kill momentum - what if they didn’t?
Scroll itch.io and you’ll see dozens of these posts daily:
* What's the right API module for my Actor class...which of 1000 blueprint nodes should i use...
* Adding a variable or renaming a field is causing Hot Reload to break, a silent fail, editor crashing…
* Hours lost trying to add a few new AI abilities or AI breaks after tiny BT tweaks…
* Unexpected gameplay behavior from animation state, loops, transitions, …
🛠️ What Sapient Does (so far):
* Runs as a native Unreal plugin with a UI built right into the editor
* Understands your full project for personalized support: code, blueprints, assets, data, and plugins
* Generates production-quality C++ and supports BP/BT creation [BETA], debugging, and optimization
* Speeds up debugging and logic tracing—what used to take hours now takes minutes
* Built for both engineers and designers—technical tasks are now accessible without losing precision
Our vision is to make it a personalized "AI teammate" that accelerates the build loop: from co-ideation and design, to rapid development and iteration, through debugging and optimization.
🚫 What it doesn’t do (yet):
* Does not create art, animation, sound, or narrative
* Doesn’t handle runtime testing, packaging or building
* Not a “one-shot" feature creation - designed for real-world game dev (i.e. no “Make Dark Souls combat with parries game”)
🧪 Open Beta:
Sapient is live with a handful of indie to AA studios, including BAFTA-winning teams. Now we’re opening it to the itch.io community.
* Website: www.sapientstudio.com
* Demos: https://www.youtube.com/@SapientAI
* Discord: https://discord.com/invite/xaPf8MMR6U