Few games have a history as turbulent as that of 1666: Amsterdam. This is the project Patrice Désilets – the founding director of the Assassin’s Creed series – fought Ubisoft for. It was the project that was in development there in some form 13 years ago, until Ubisoft decided to shelve 1666 – as it was known then – and suspend Désilets, prompting a legal battle that he eventually won three years later. Désilets has wanted to make this game for a long time.
First, however, he had to create a new studio, Panache Digital, and crank it into action by making something else first, Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey. This was an uneven but memorable game about evolution, playing from the days of being a primate through to being an early human, by way of million-year gaps in between – an idea I’d not seen before. “Ancestors is ambitious and clunky and not much fun – and it’s often quietly thought-provoking too,” wrote Christian Donlan in our Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey review.
All the while, Désilets dropped glimpses and hints about 1666: Amsterdam, sharing prototypes and proclamations about what it was once supposed to be. In 2016, he called it a game about being “worse than the devil”, showing footage recorded two years earlier. This featured a raven flying through old Amsterdam and ended with a black-robed, black-hatted figure standing on the prow of a canal boat that was floating on the river amidst a lively, burgeoning city. Internally at Ubisoft, the game was apparently once talked of as the next Assassin’s Creed. It sounded dark, satanic and, frankly, delicious.
Then in 2019, with Ancestors released, Désilets declared he was finally doing it: 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 been realised. 1666: Amsterdam was properly announced to launch in early access later this year and with a playable prologue available immediately. A triumph at last. Or is it?
No sooner had the prologue been released than people started spotting telltale 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 said. “Please be assured that the Early Access and full game will not include any assets generated by AI.”
1666: Amsterdam’s image has been shaken further by the “Mixed” reception the prologue received on Steam, with this taster leaving many people confused about what the game actually is, even after playing it. And it’s a sentiment I agree with now that I’ve tried it too.
1666: Amsterdam’s prologue demo is split in three, reflecting the three time periods the game will straddle: 1666, 1999, and the present day. In 1666, we are the witch-like character Noa, who we see in the game’s trailer, approaching a large tree to take part in a ritual. Noa is a Collector, a kind of supernaturally gifted individual, and in the demo we wield her power by concentrating on objects to interact with them, in this case setting torches and braziers ablaze. There’s no combat despite it being glimpsed in the trailer; here we simply walk to the large tree as the screen sporadically glitches and shakes – showcasing a dark, disruptive power – then we sacrifice an animal, interact with its guts, and a cat leaps into our arms. Then the timeline jumps.
A collection of images I took in the 1666: Amsterdam Prologue.
We move to the present day, and we’re inside a large, grand, university library of some kind. We’re a young female student, there to see her professor about a strange letter she’s found, linked to things in her family’s mysterious past. The professor seems to know more. There’s a gentle interaction as we’re asked to locate things in the library, requiring us to reference a library map. And as clues are found and the mysterious letter is decrypted, our connection with the past is confirmed. The timeline jumps 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 towards a hotel filled with people dressed for celebration. We continue following them through its corridors 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 living the events of the letter that was decrypted – words hover in front of us showing us the way through the hotel. As we move, we learn that the woman we’re with is connected to the witchy cult we witnessed at the beginning of the game, and in her room, she’s 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 warp and change; timelines converge then jump, and we’re back to the beginning again.
But it’s a very narrow and controlled slice of gameplay, and it makes it very hard to tell what the basis of 1666: Amsterdam will be
Except, this time we’re the cat – we are a human’s consciousness in a cat exploring the world we saw at the beginning of the prologue. We run through the world, jumping over fallen branches, until we too come to the ritual at the tree, which we climb before jumping into the arms of Noa. The cat at the beginning: somehow, it was us. Noa greets us and welcomes us as her companion, and the demo ends.
It’s intriguing. Creatively it’s ambitious – bold, even – to try and stitch timelines together like this; I’m reminded distinctly of the modern day Animus sections in the original Assassin’s Creed as I write this. Trying to make everything work together across different eras without one dominating the others is a complicated task – but it’s also a compelling one. Thread it together with dark witchery and thematically speaking, I’m sold.
But it’s a very narrow and controlled slice of gameplay, and it makes it very hard to tell what the basis of 1666: Amsterdam will be, gameplay wise, and how much freedom we’ll have to explore it. An announcement press release described 1666: Amsterdam as a third-person, story-led 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 work? How will we uncover these “entities”? Is this an allusion to some kind of investigation mechanic? The press release does mention “investigate by day” and “face your demons at night”, but from this snapshot it’s so hard to tell what that means. Is this a deliberate tease to whet our appetite – and the game’s wishlists have certainly soared in this regard – or something else?
Perhaps the confusion arises from it being a sort of tease we’re just not used to in games; this isn’t a demo so much as a playable trailer, a mood-setter, so maybe we shouldn’t try to understand it in a traditional way. And the atmosphere here is strong. 1666: Amsterdam stood out in the torrent of SGF trailers because this is not a time and place we usually see, and I like that about it. Désilets clearly has a knack for a unique pitch – and a unique way of framing 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 slice of game shown in the demo at least is rigid in design – there’s no sense of freedom here, of going anywhere other than the game declares. Is there a wider world here to explore, and if there is, to what degree? It does enough with ambience 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 rather invention than polish – but I’m concerned about what it means so close to 1666: Amsterdam’s arrival. Granted, early access games are not finished, but I don’t recall seeing many story-led action-adventures like this in early access before (with perhaps the exception of Baldur’s Gate 3, though that was a very different kind of RPG). They’re not the sort of systems-heavy games you need many people to test, unless of course testing isn’t the primary motive here but extra income or attracting a publisher is. If it is, that worries me, because how much of the game has actually been made? What shape is 1666: Amsterdam in, really?
I should say, I’m genuinely glad to see 1666: Amsterdam realised as an idea after all this time. And I’m glad its mood – and desire to do things a little differently – seem undiluted. 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 unfounded; I hope all of my doubts are washed away by the river Amstel as we navigate a story based upon it. A turbulent development journey has become a somewhat turbulent reappearance. Let’s hope the waters are calmed come early access release.
