1666: Amsterdam hands-on — witchy action-adventure has big ideas but rough edges ahead of August early access

Patrice Désilets, the original creator of Assassin's Creed, is finally close to releasing 1666: Amsterdam — his passion project over 15 years in the making. Developed at his Montreal indie studio Panache Digital Games, the game hits Steam Early Access on August 25. Press from multiple outlets recently traveled to Amsterdam itself to play an extended build, and the picture that emerges is one of genuine ambition wrestling with some real rough edges.

The game follows Noa Brooklyn, a young witch and newly initiated Collector for a magical faction called the Zaindaris, whose job is to hunt down corrupted beings called Originals — powerful entities who were gifted ancient magic called Nux centuries ago and have since gone rogue. The story spans three time periods: 1666 Amsterdam, New Year's Eve 1999, and the present day. A man named Aaron, whose consciousness gets transported into the body of Noa's cat familiar during a 1999 ritual, serves as a second protagonist of sorts, with his daughter Clio anchoring the modern-day thread. It's a layered, ambitious narrative setup — though multiple reviewers noted the overlapping timelines take some untangling.

Combat is the area that drew the most concern. Noa fights with a wooden broomstick and eventually unlocks spells — a petrify spell that turns enemies to stone, a levitate spell for aerial follow-ups — but the core loop is described as limited and one-note across all three previews. Encounters are wave-based and cinematically locked until cleared, with enemies attacking from all angles in ways that can feel awkward. A boss fight bugged out entirely for one outlet's session, with the Original enemy stopping mid-transformation and wandering off. Désilets acknowledged the iterative nature of development directly: "We do between 15 to 20 builds a day. Progression is more important than perfection." There are also no difficulty settings yet, though the team is reportedly thinking about adding them. On the exploration side, things look more promising — broom flight above Amsterdam's candlelit canals is a genuine highlight, though it's restricted to specific zones rather than being fully freeform.

The game's road to release has been anything but smooth. Désilets originally conceived 1666: Amsterdam while still at Ubisoft, and a years-long legal battle over the rights followed his departure. He co-founded Panache Digital Games in 2014 and has been building toward this release ever since. A free playable prologue launched on Steam alongside the game's re-reveal at Summer Game Fest, but it received a mixed reception and left players with more questions than answers. The August 25 Early Access date is what's generating the most anxiety now — the build shown to press still carries noticeable jank, and the gap between the game's imaginative world and its current execution is wide enough that several outlets came away cautiously worried rather than confidently excited.