1666: Amsterdam Enters Steam Early Access After 15-Year Journey

Désilets, director of Assassin’s Creed 1 and 2 and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, reflected on the project at Gamescom. “It’s been a long journey,” he said. He picked up a controller to show off his gothic adventure, taking one of the game’s dual protagonists for a covert stroll down a packed Amsterdam canal street before shaking off her civilian disguise and raining hex-induced havoc on the screaming populace.

The game’s origins date to a 2011 holiday in Amsterdam. “Walking around, seeing the houses in Amsterdam. It’s really a level design city,” Désilets recalled. “I could picture an Assassin’s Creed there…there's a facade, and all the mystery. Then I passed a building inscribed with ‘Anno 1666.’ and immediately I thought, 'What if I do a game about the Devil set in Amsterdam?'”

Originally envisioned as a cinematic Satan simulator, 1666: Amsterdam was meant to be a more gothic-feeling spiritual successor to Désilets’ 2010 game Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. Publisher THQ backed the project, and Désilets spent two years working on it before THQ went bankrupt, he said. THQ was then snapped up by his old employer Ubisoft. Désilets briefly returned to the Assassin’s Creed publisher but was almost immediately let go, leaving the project in development hell. He fought for the rights and regained custody of the game in 2016, including the 3D, concept art, and some animation, according to TechRadar.

By then, Désilets had lost interest in writing a game starring the devil’s apprentice. He said the 2016 TV series Lucifer put him off the subject matter. He remained drawn to an evil-infested 17th-century Amsterdam and posed a new question: “What if there was a witch hunt going on in Amsterdam in 1666?” A new story unfolded, retaining the idea of a 1999 time period alongside 1666 and playing off two sides of the same coin: reflection and duality. He pitched it to his team in January 2020 and rewrote almost everything.

The pandemic forced remote work, and retooling 1666 took the team at Panache six years, TechRadar reported. The initial Satan simulator had been a Désilets-led project, but Panache, which previously made the 2011 survival game Ancestors, grew into a team effort. “It’s funny, because it’s really a team game, yet in some ways, if we go back to my original PowerPoint, it’s crazy how similar it is,” Désilets said. He added that the final game still centers on an agile, gravity-defying protagonist. “... I feel like I'm always doing the same game ... about traversal…” he said, laughing. “The cat is my way to play with verticality [here]... Even in Ancestors, where you were an ape in a clan, it was still this sheer pleasure of going around a 3D world.” He attributed the recurring theme to his own vertigo, saying he cannot climb in real life. “Don't ask me to climb anything. It's a joke in my family.”

Editor's Summary

1666: Amsterdam, directed by Patrice Désilets, has entered Steam Early Access in August 2026 after a development history stretching back to 2011. The game began as a Satan-focused spiritual successor to Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood under THQ, survived THQ’s bankruptcy and a rights battle, and was later reshaped into a witch-hunt story set in 1666 Amsterdam and 1999. Its release brings a long-delayed project from the director of Assassin’s Creed 1 and 2 and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time to players in early access.