Patrice Désilets returns with 1666: Amsterdam — the obsession Ubisoft couldn’t kill

There is a particular weight to a creative obsession that someone tried to take from you. Patrice Désilets — the director who designed Assassin’s Creed and whose work on Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time helped shape a generation of action-adventure thinking — has been carrying one for the better part of his career. The game is called 1666: Amsterdam. A legal dispute with Ubisoft threatened to erase it entirely. At Summer Game Fest, after years of public silence, Désilets finally let the world inside.

The game’s structural premise earns its atmosphere. Three timelines — 1666, 1999, and the present — converge around a single mystery, each era contributing what the others cannot explain alone. At the centre is Noa Brooklyn, born into a calling she did not choose: the Collector, an enforcer of debts owed to entities known as the Originals, who have lived among Amsterdam’s citizens for centuries, granted time and power, and — by the game’s own accounting — the freedom to abuse both. Noa’s Commencement, the act of assuming that role, is where the prologue begins.

1666: Amsterdam gameplay screenshot — the Originals, supernatural entities in 1666 Amsterdam — Image: Panache Digital Games

Where most announcements arrive as footage and promises, Panache has led with something playable. A free thirty-minute prologue is available now on Steam and the Epic Games Store, introducing the world, the characters, and the mystery at the game’s core. Désilets was unambiguous about the reasoning: in the announcement, the studio put it plainly — “No fake footage, no vertical slices — just a playable experience players can try today.” A team of nearly seventy developers in Montréal spent six years building toward that standard before surfacing.

1666: Amsterdam gameplay screenshot — 17th century Amsterdam streets — Image: Panache Digital Games

The companion system offers a second perspective on the world. Aaron — a character drawn into the story from 1999 — experiences Amsterdam through a cat’s senses. The choice of who walks beside Noa is made early and holds; it is less a gameplay variable than a narrative lens through which the mystery changes shape. Désilets has long treated structural choices as arguments in themselves — in Assassin’s Creed, free-running was not a feature bolted onto a genre but a logic that made the world legible from inside. 1666: Amsterdam appears to reason about its timelines and its characters the same way.

The full game is targeting Early Access on PC in 2026; console versions are planned for a later date. The free prologue and the full game’s store pages are live now on Steam and Epic Games Store. Panache Digital Games is based in Montréal with a team of around seventy.

The studio spent fourteen years keeping this project alive. The prologue is its answer to what that time made possible.

Tags: 1666: Amsterdam, Panache Digital Games, Patrice Désilets, Summer Game Fest