1666: Amsterdam

The short version

A note first: we've put twelve hours into 1666: Amsterdam, which is most of the way through its roughly fifteen-hour Early Access build — but the story isn't finished and won't be for a while, so treat this as a first impression, not a final verdict. With that said: this is the Assassin's Creed game that never was, finally real. Patrice Désilets fought for over a decade to get his cursed passion project out of development limbo, and there's genuine magic in the premise. There's also genuine jank, and an early-days misstep worth naming. Promising is the right word — with an asterisk.

Story

1666: Amsterdam casts you as Noa, "The Collector," and her feline familiar Aaron — a cat possessed by the disembodied spirit of a man from 300 years in the future, whose last memory is of a swanky hotel. You hunt targets called the Originals, who inhabit ordinary citizens by day and must be confronted at nightfall. It's occult, it's strange, and it's steeped in Panache's own witch-and-Cthulhu-adjacent lore rather than anything textbook. The premise crackles.

The honest caveat: it's Early Access, and the narrative isn't complete. What's here builds a world that knows how to keep things moving, but it ends mid-story, and Panache's update cadence will determine whether the momentum survives the wait between chapters. We're rooting for it; we can't yet judge where it lands.

Gameplay

The loop is pure classic Assassin's Creed, and if you played the first four games it's practically muscle memory: as Noa you gather information by talking to NPCs, doing old-fashioned sleuthing, and exploring 1666 Amsterdam, building toward a climactic boss fight against your target. Combat, when it comes, is basic but effective — whack waves of witch hunters, roll out of the way — and the day-investigation, night-confrontation rhythm gives the whole thing a satisfying shape.

Aaron is the fresh idea and the first real hurdle. As the cat, you reach hard-to-access places and even possess other NPCs to slip into restricted areas — a genuinely clever hook. But the feline platforming is restrictive and linear: there's one intended way through each obstacle, and it isn't always intuitive, so you end up shuffling around trying to find the exact spot that makes the jump prompt appear. It's the same frustration testers flagged in the demo, and it's still here.

And we have to name it: when the free Prologue demo dropped, players found AI-generated placeholder assets, and the backlash was loud. Désilets has said these were placeholders that should have been removed and are now gone from the rest of the game, and in our twelve hours we didn't spot obvious offenders — but the episode dented early trust, and transparency about AI use is something this site will always flag rather than skip.

Visuals & Performance

At its best, 1666: Amsterdam is drenched in eerie, occult atmosphere — the opening and the moody recreation of 17th-century Amsterdam are its strongest visual notes, and the first-Assassin's-Creed DNA shows in the crowd-filled streets. It's uneven, though: optimization is rough in spots and the presentation swings between striking and unfinished, which is Early Access in a nutshell.

Craft — 6.9

(Early read.) A brilliant premise and a genuinely novel familiar mechanic, undercut by fiddly platforming, Early Access roughness, and the lingering shadow of the AI-asset controversy. The ambition is huge; the execution is still catching up.

Hold — 7.1

(Early read.) Twelve hours went down easy and left us wanting the next chapter — the best signal an unfinished game can give. But "hold" depends entirely on Panache delivering the rest, and on a reasonable cadence. This number is a placeholder for a game that isn't done.

The verdict

A provisional Middling Snout, leaning hopeful. After twelve hours, 1666: Amsterdam is a rough, fascinating, decade-in-the-making passion project with a premise we badly want to see finished. If you love old-school Assassin's Creed and don't mind buying into a work in progress — jank, cat-platforming and all — there's something special taking shape here. If you want a polished, complete game, wishlist it and let it cook. We'll Re-Sniff it properly when the story's whole.