Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Midnight Chronicle issue #05 already! Thank you for being here.
To mark the announcement of Early Access on August 25, 2026, the team has released an all-new gameplay feature showcasing the core systems players will master throughout their journey as Noa and Aaron.
In this final gameplay feature video, co-founder and executive producer Jean-François Boivin offers the most in-depth look yet at the game's investigation mechanics as players hunt the mysterious Originals across Amsterdam.
It also showcases combat, the day and night cycle, Noa's mystical abilities, Aaron's feline gameplay, and how both characters combine their unique skills to uncover hidden truths and restore the balance of the world.
For the French version, you can watch it here: Le Cycle jour et nuit de 1666: Amsterdam
For this month's edition of interview we spoke with Sarah Petri, one of our game designers, about the team's process for building the gameplay universe of 1666: Amsterdam
In many ways, the game's narrative has guided the gameplay. The story we want to tell is rich, and so the gameplay very often had to respond to the ideas emerging from the writing. We had to show a real capacity for adaptation in developing the game's ingredients and mechanics, to figure out how they could best serve our story.
To do that, we had to make sure we kept good communication going between the Narrative and Game Design teams. Honestly, it wasn't simple, because we didn't always move at the same pace, but it was also the source of some beautiful gameplay ideas.
Sometimes, narrative elements slotted in very easily as an elegant gameplay solution. The moon is a great example of that, it was originally a purely diegetic element. It first came from a desire to associate a natural element with the Original's transformation, to stage the moment of revelation aesthetically while keeping it rooted in the world of the Witches. But it then became a very interesting gameplay tool for guiding the player and showing them where to face the demons at night.
What also helped us is that we agreed quickly on the big concepts that would set the direction of the game, both narratively and in terms of gameplay.
Duality is at the heart of the experience: by day, Noa is called to wear her mask as a citizen of Amsterdam. She explores and gathers the resources and information that will let her uncover the identity of the Originals. By night, she can reveal herself, just like her targets, and reaps the fruit of the investigations carried out during the day.
The link between gameplay and narrative is expressed largely through the idea of revelation, the switch between Noa's two forms, and the range of actions that change depending on her form.
The other central pivot that keeps everything coherent is the idea that what Noa experiences comes from Clio's decoding in the present moment. This lets us translate the player's experience through attempts to decrypt the book. The players can't really get it "wrong": they disprove or confirm hypotheses to uncover a story that has already been written, but that also reveals itself through their choices. The narrative then directly meets the gameplay possibilities here: the story being told is the one you wrote through the abilities you chose.
I think one of our biggest challenges on this front is the sheer number of levers we put at the player's disposal to move through Amsterdam. From the very start, we were focused on offering the freedom to solve puzzles in several ways, so that everyone could feel like they were writing a personal experience. Patrice really cares about us experiencing the city as one big playground, where you can lose yourself in the very visceral pleasure of trying things out and letting curiosity guide you.
That represents a huge amount of work in developing the many gameplay tools needed to support that fantasy. We had to design a variety of gameplay "keys" for Noa, but also through the cat's abilities and possession, and make sure the systems "talk" to each other properly and complement rather than cannibalize one another. That's far from straightforward.
Keeping a good balance between guiding the player and allowing a certain autonomy in their research is also always very interesting. Amsterdam gave us wonderful landmarks and architectural elements for this, like the "gable stones," which naturally found their place in our tracking and clue system. Using these tools through "analyze" and "track" to orient yourself in the city is key to making sure the player can follow a thread of investigation.
Finally, the choice to expose the Originals during the day and make them accessible at all times, even ahead of the mission, meant the identity quest couldn't rest solely on finding their location. It's about piercing their identity, beyond the face they openly present to the world, and gathering enough information to force them to “unmask” themselves, both literally and figuratively. In gameplay terms, we made sure the identity quest involves both a concrete object, the seal, which embodies the pact signed by the Original using their true name, which is used as the trigger for the transformation through the "Nominem" spell.
As a Game Designer, I'm definitely eager for them to have fun with the different mechanics and give us feedback so we can offer the best possible gaming experience. But I'm also really looking forward to them understanding the more "meta" loop that shapes the game, with everything that implies in terms of gain and loss, especially through the hypothesis system, and how much that can change their experience.
Otherwise, as a player who loves exploration and discovering secrets myself, I hope they'll enjoy taking in our world and finding the hiding spots scattered throughout it… That's something we want to keep improving, and I hope players will all sense the potential Amsterdam 1666 has to offer over the coming months of development!
This is the final stretch, polishing as much of the content as we can before Early Access launches.
It's all hands on deck.
We're incredibly proud of the work everyone's put in, and just as excited about what's ahead.
Next cycle, we return with the last Devlog, about the audio and music of the game. We sat down with Jorane and our audio team to answer some questions.
Thank you for being here. See you at the full moon.
In the absence of light. We ready ourselves. The calling. It speaks to us through the silence. It whispers from beyond the darkness. Our purpose starts to take shape. The calling comes, in months anon.