Decima

Decima engine display

The Decima engine is a proprietary game engine developed primarily by Guerrilla Games. The engine is compatible with 4K resolution and high-dynamic-range imaging used for games on the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Microsoft Windows. The engine is used in Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West.

History

Initially, the game engine did not have a name when it was used to power Killzone: Shadow Fall. In June 2015, Guerrilla announced that their new action RPG Horizon Zero Dawn would use a slightly modified version of the Killzone: Shadow Fall engine. The same year, in August, a version of the engine modified with Havok physics was used for the game developed by Supermassive Games, Until Dawn. In December, Until Dawn's PlayStation VR spin-off, Until Dawn: Rush of Blood, again used the same engine.

Following its abrupt separation from Konami and subsequent reformation in late 2015, Kojima Productions was left without a game engine of its own, as Konami retained rights to the studio's Fox Engine.

In June 2016, Hideo Kojima announced preparations for Kojima Productions' independent game Death Stranding, inspecting two engine candidates, of which the latter had been used to create the first teaser that was unveiled at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2016 conference. After receiving the Industry Icon award at The Game Awards 2016, Kojima premiered a trailer for the game with the engine's logo. At PlayStation Experience, Kojima had announced that he had partnered with Guerrilla Games, using the engine for development on Death Stranding.

According to executive producer Angie Smets, Decima was originally known simply as "the engine" by Guerrilla employees, as there were no developers using it outside of the company. However, when Kojima decided that he wanted to use Guerrilla's engine for Death Stranding, the team suddenly had to come up with a name for marketing purposes. They settled on naming it after Dejima, the island where a Dutch trading post appeared in the 17th century and once symbolized the strong Dutch–Japanese trade relations; for over two centuries, the Netherlands was the only Western country officially allowed to trade with Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate's sakoku policy.

Guerrilla's next game, Horizon Forbidden West used an updated version of the engine.

Capabilities

Decima houses frameworks for scripting artificial intelligence, creating dynamic physics, generating logics and a tool suite for developing entire game worlds. The engine additionally supports physically based rendering and volumetric entities, with significant changes implemented for its use in rendering the world of Horizon. During the development of Death Stranding, Kojima Productions and Guerrilla Games' collaboration has lead to constant wide-ranging improvements being made to the engine and circulated between the two studios.

Games

• Killzone: Shadow Fall (2013)
• Until Dawn (2015)
• RIGS: Mechanized Combat League (2016)
• Horizon Zero Dawn (2017)
• Death Stranding (2019)
• Horizon Forbidden West (2022)

Notes

• Hermen Hulst also mentioned Decima, the Roman goddess of childbirth, as an influence on the engine's chosen name, due specifically to her relationship with creativity.