Some games become legends just by refusing to die, and 1666: Amsterdam has spent more than a decade as one of them. Patrice Désilets, the creative director who built Assassin’s Creed before things went sideways at Ubisoft, used Summer Game Fest 2026 to finally pull his long-buried passion project into the light. His studio Panache Digital Games revealed 1666: Amsterdam with a world premiere trailer, and a free playable prologue is already live.
The road to this reveal has been long enough to qualify as gaming folklore. Désilets started 1666 at THQ Montreal around 2011, only for THQ to go bankrupt and the project to slide into Ubisoft’s hands along with the studio. Ubisoft let him go in 2013, he fought to win the rights back, and he finally did in 2016, then spent years building Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey before circling back to the game that got away. By Panache’s count, getting here took nearly 70 developers and six years of work.
As for the game, 1666: Amsterdam is a dark, third-person, story-led action-adventure that unfolds across three timelines: 1666, 1999, and the present day. You play as Noa Brooklyn, raised by a group called the Zaindaris to become the Collector, the one tasked with confronting the Originals, ancient entities who have lived among Amsterdam’s people for centuries and whose borrowed power has finally come due. Early on, you also pick a companion to walk beside you, including Aaron, a figure pulled from 1999 who sees the world through the eyes of a cat.
If that intrigues you, there’s no reason to wait, because the prologue is free and live now on Steam and the Epic Games Store. The roughly 30-minute teaser, called Noa’s Commencement, introduces the world, its characters, and the central mystery, and it leads into a full game that hits Early Access on PC sometime in 2026, with console versions planned for later. Désilets is pitching it as “an amuse-bouche before a nine-course dinner,” and after six years spent on an actual playable build rather than flashy marketing footage, he sounds proud to finally have something to put in front of people.
