It's not about reinventing anything - it's about using what's already there.
ViEWD is a minimalist template engine for PHP. Since it relies on PHP's built-in standard-functionality and doesn't use any other special language, it's considered a native template engine.
Just copy those modules you'd like to use in your project. Or add this repo as git submodule.
This package is also available via composer.
Try $ composer require voidblaster/viewd
See example directory.