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1666: Amsterdam
Noa regrets.
Few titles have experienced as tumultuous a history as 1666: Amsterdam. This is the project Patrice Désilets — the original creative lead behind the Assassin's Creed franchise — waged a legal battle with Ubisoft over. It was the venture that had been in development there in some capacity 13 years ago, until Ubisoft chose to put 1666 — as it was then called — on hold and suspend Désilets, sparking a courtroom fight he ultimately won three years later. Désilets has long aspired to bring this game to life.
1666: Amsterdam
Developer: Panache Digital
Publisher: Panache Digital
Platform: Played on PC
Availability: Set to debut later this year in early access. Only PC (via Steam and Epic) have been listed as platforms thus far. A 30-minute prologue demo is currently playable.
First, though, he needed to establish a new studio, Panache Digital, and get it running by developing something else first: Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey. That was an uneven yet memorable title centered on evolution, taking players from the era of being a primate through to early humanity, with million-year gaps in between — a concept I'd never encountered before. "Ancestors is ambitious and clunky and not much fun — and it's often quietly thought-provoking too," wrote Christian Donlan in our review of Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey.
Throughout this period, Désilets offered occasional glimpses and clues about 1666: Amsterdam, sharing prototypes and statements about what it was once meant to be. In 2016, he described it as a game about being "worse than the devil," showcasing footage recorded two years earlier. That footage featured a raven soaring through old Amsterdam and concluded with a figure in a black robe and black hat standing on the bow of a canal boat drifting along the river amid a lively, expanding city. Internally at Ubisoft, the game was reportedly once discussed as the next Assassin's Creed. It sounded dark, satanic, and frankly, enticing.
Then in 2019, after Ancestors was released, Désilets announced he was finally moving forward: returning to 1666 Amsterdam. "I want to do a game about the Devil," he told me at a conference in Canada. Fast forward to the opening showcase of Summer Game Fest 2026, seven years later, and that vision has come to fruition. 1666: Amsterdam was officially revealed to launch in early access later this year, with a playable prologue available immediately. A victory at last. Or is it?
No sooner had the prologue been released than individuals began noticing clear signs of generative AI use — both in the creation of its art assets and its marketing materials — and a public backlash ensued. This prompted an apology from Panache Digital: "We own up to this oversight and apologise for any upset caused," the studio stated. "Please be assured that the Early Access and full game will not include any assets generated by AI."
1666: Amsterdam's reputation has been further undermined by the "Mixed" reception the prologue received on Steam, with this preview leaving many players uncertain about what the game actually is, even after finishing it. And it's a feeling I share now that I've experienced it myself.
1666: Amsterdam's prologue demo is divided into three parts, reflecting the three time periods the game will cover: 1666, 1999, and the present day. In 1666, we take on the role of the witch-like character Noa, whom we see in the game's trailer, approaching a large tree to participate in a ritual. Noa is a Collector, a type of supernaturally gifted individual, and in the demo we wield her power by focusing on objects to interact with them, in this case igniting torches and braziers. There's no combat despite it being shown in the trailer; here we simply walk to the large tree as the screen intermittently glitches and shakes — showcasing a dark, disruptive force — then we sacrifice an animal, interact with its entrails, and a cat leaps into our arms. Then the timeline shifts.
We move to the present day, and we're inside a large, grand university library of some sort. We're a young female student, there to see her professor about a strange letter she's discovered, tied to elements in her family's mysterious past. The professor appears to know more. There's a gentle interaction as we're asked to locate items in the library, requiring us to consult a library map. And as clues are uncovered and the mysterious letter is decoded, our link to the past is confirmed. The timeline shifts again.
It's 1999 now, and we're following two young lovers on New Year's Eve — Millennium Eve — walking along Amsterdam's river Amstel toward a hotel filled with people dressed for celebration. We continue trailing them through its hallways as they make their way to their room.
The male character here is the father of the university student whose body and timeline we just left, and we're experiencing the events of the letter that was decrypted — words hover before us guiding our path through the hotel. As we move, we discover that the woman we're with is linked to the witchy cult we witnessed at the start of the game, and in her room, she has set up a ritual to perform, with mirrors positioned around the bed. As the pair make love, the ritual begins and the room starts to distort and transform; timelines converge then leap, and we're back at the beginning again.
But it's a very restricted and controlled piece of gameplay, and it makes it extremely difficult to determine what the foundation of 1666: Amsterdam will be
Except, this time we're the cat — we are a human's consciousness inside a cat exploring the world we saw at the start of the prologue. We dash through the environment, leaping over fallen branches, until we also reach the ritual at the tree, which we climb before jumping into Noa's arms. The cat at the beginning: somehow, it was us. Noa greets us and welcomes us as her companion, and the demo concludes.
It's intriguing. Creatively it's ambitious — bold, even — to attempt stitching timelines together like this; I'm strongly reminded of the modern-day Animus sections in the original Assassin's Creed as I write this. Trying to make everything work cohesively across different eras without one overshadowing the others is a challenging task — but it's also a compelling one. Combine it with dark witchcraft and thematically, I'm convinced.
But it's a very restricted and controlled piece of gameplay, and it makes it extremely difficult to determine what the foundation of 1666: Amsterdam will be, from a gameplay perspective, and how much freedom we'll have to explore it. An announcement press release described 1666: Amsterdam as a third-person, story-driven action-adventure, where "Noa wields witchcraft to uncover entities hiding behind human faces." But does that mean we'll primarily be based in her 1666 timeline, or will we also do that elsewhere? And how will combat function? How will we uncover these "entities"? Is this a reference to some kind of investigation mechanic? The press release does mention "investigate by day" and "face your demons at night," but from this preview it's so hard to tell what that entails. Is this a deliberate tease to pique our interest — and the game's wishlists have certainly surged in this regard — or something else?
Perhaps the confusion stems from it being a kind of tease we're simply not accustomed to in games; this isn't a demo so much as a playable trailer, a mood-setter, so maybe we shouldn't try to interpret it in a conventional way. And the atmosphere here is potent. 1666: Amsterdam stood out in the flood of SGF trailers because this isn't a time and place we typically see, and I appreciate that about it. Désilets clearly has a talent for a unique pitch — and a unique way of presenting it.
But up close, in action, away from the pre-rendered trailer, the game is less impressive. Visually it looks dated to me, and the segment of gameplay shown in the demo at least is rigid in design — there's no sense of freedom here, of going anywhere other than what the game dictates. Is there a broader world here to explore, and if so, to what extent? It does enough with atmosphere and mood to get by, but it feels like we shouldn't expect an Assassin's Creed, despite what it was once intended to be. This is a game made by 70 people, not 10 times that, and I think it shows.
Jank can be charming — I'd prefer invention over polish — but I'm worried about what it means so close to 1666: Amsterdam's release. Granted, early access games aren't finished, but I don't recall seeing many story-driven action-adventures like this in early access before (with perhaps the exception of Baldur's Gate 3, though that was a very different type of RPG). They're not the sort of systems-heavy games that require many people to test, unless of course testing isn't the main goal here but additional revenue or attracting a publisher is. If that's the case, it concerns me, because how much of the game has actually been completed? What state is 1666: Amsterdam really in?
I should say, I'm genuinely pleased to see 1666: Amsterdam realized as a concept after all this time. And I'm glad its mood — and its desire to do things a bit differently — seem intact. But for now I'm mostly left with more questions: what happened to the "be worse than the devil" idea, for instance? I hope my concerns are baseless; I hope all my doubts are swept away by the river Amstel as we navigate a story built around it. A turbulent development journey has become a somewhat turbulent re-emergence. Let's hope the waters settle by the early access release.