'That's why I fought for 1666'

An interview with Assassin's Creed creator Patrice Désilets about his new game (which is also his old game), people/cats, and the very long struggle to make an adventure about the "year of the devil"

Patrice Désilets, a day after revealing 1666: Amsterdam in Los Angeles. Photo: Game File

At a cafe in Los Angeles three weeks ago, game designer Patrice Désilets asked me if I was superstitious about numbers.

No, I said.

He’d never asked me this before, though usually it’s me who asks Désilets questions.

We’d first met in 2006 at E3, when he was showing off his brainchild, Assassin’s Creed.

We’d last chatted in 2019, when he was promoting Ancestors: A Humankind Odyssey, the debut game from his Montreal-based start-up game studio Panache.

We were now talking on June 6, 2026, which, come to think of it, was a date that had three 6s in it.

This interview was about Panache’s new game, 1666: Amsterdam, a third-person action adventure about witches, cats and time. It’s a game Désilets has been trying to make since 2011, and it’s set for an early access release on PC later this year.

“Three, six, nine are the numbers of the game,” Désilets said. I was certainly getting signs that he was superstitious about numbers.

He had a story to tell me.

“Stephen, when I got fired from Ubisoft, JF and I went to have a sandwich in a deli,” he said, referring to a fateful day in 2013 that he spent with Panache co-founder Jean-François Boivin. “When we received the bill, it was 16 dollars and 66 cents.”

I laughed and told him I was skeptical.

Désilets swore it was true. He’d taken a picture of the receipt, he said. The memory was vivid. They’d gotten two smoked meat sandwiches. “And a pickle.”

Our interview at this cafe in LA. was fairly impromptu. Désilets and I hadn’t been in touch in years, and I was surprised to see him on stage the day before at the Summer Game Fest showcase revealing that 1666 was Panache’s next game and was launching a prologue demo on PC that day.

Désilets had been talking about and working on versions of 1666 for over a decade. He’d sued his two-time employer Ubisoft over it. Now, this game developer with one of the best resumes in the business (the rewindable adventure Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, the history-reliving Assassin’s Creed) was back. 1666 was back. And I reached out to see if we could catch up.

The year of the devil

Over lemonades, we discussed his long journey with 1666: Amsterdam, the unusual structure of a game set across three time periods, why he keeps making games about time and why he so badly wanted to make the game.

Among the things I learned is that 1666 isn’t meant to be a one-off. Just as Désilets’ original Assassin’s Creed included a map of global locations where future games might be set, 1666 is meant to travel, too.

“The thing you need to understand, that’s why I fought for 1666,” he said. “Amsterdam is the first game. This is where we’re going. Then you just change the place, but each time, talk about 1666 the year.”

Subsequent games would go “elsewhere around the world” to explore this “year of the devil,” he said.

Intriguing, yes, but first Désilets and I were going to discuss how this first one came to be. And maybe get a little more proof about some of this numbers stuff.