1666: Amsterdam (Demo) ★★★★☆
1666: Amsterdam, where we become a cat familiar to a witch of old times.
Every 333 years, something stirs. 1666: Amsterdam is a 3rd person Dark, Story-Led, Action-Adventure where Noa, the Collector, wields witchcraft to uncover demonic entities hiding behind human faces. Investigate by day. Face your demons at night.
- Gameplay:
- Linear path roaming, with ability usage
- Visual presentation:
- Has a bit of psychological horror to it
- Storytelling:
- Conversations with people as well as speech through environmental progression
- Sexual content:
- There is a sexual ritual at the beginning, but nothing explicit is revealed
Pros:
- We play as a witch and a cat
- Storytelling as you progress
Cons:
- Points of interest targeting
- Repetitive advice
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Explanation to Negative Feedback
Points of interest targeting
Basically, you can target something and focus on it in order to keep it as a target on the screen, just so you know where it is. A guideline on what you need to reach, so you don’t lose sight of it, basically.
It’s what a lot of games have.
But the reason I place it into the cons is because I think you need to focus on the thing, and then target it a second time in order to stop tracking, and I kind of wish you could just negate the tracking with a single button, without having to focus on it again when you no longer need it.
Some games have the sticky targeting disappear once you reach it, other games another way.
This could just be me being lazy as a gamer. In any case, the con doesn’t subtract from the game itself. It’s just something I’m grumbling over.
Repetitive advice
Holy Life is Strange, Batman, this is not something I want in this game, or any game, honestly, though it’s helpful up to a point. There may be something in the settings to reduce how many times this advice is given to you, if not in the demo, then hopefully in the full release.
But man, in the library when I was wanting to wander around and explore the professor kept telling me what to do over and over.
I get it dude.
I’m distracted.
Shut up already.
Explanation to Positive Feedback
We play as a witch and a cat
I love the possible concept of switching from witch to cat–something that we don’t really know will happen at the moment, but I can believe.
In the first portion, we play as the witch and you get the overall feel for switching from casual clothes to your witch attire, and then the mechanics of using your abilities as the witch. In the second portion, we play as a cat.
If I remember correctly, the cat can scan the surroundings for places you can go, but I didn’t really fiddle with that, I just went the direct path.
As the cat you’ll have to jump onto things when the prompts show up just to progress, so you don’t get a lot to do as the feline as far as the demo goes, but hey. You’re a cat, and that’s good enough for most, because really, you’re acting as a witch’s familiar if I’m not mistaken.
Storytelling as you progress
A lot of times in video games the storytelling comes from cutscenes, one-on-one conversations with someone, or by picking up material to read, whether in a note or in the menu. In this game, the storytelling at a certain point happens as you’re walking through the environment, so there’s no reason to stop the immersive gameplay to read something or chat with another.
Even though that does still happen.
I just really like that they’re allowing us to traverse through the environment while technically we’re reading a letter that was left for us, though the narration is coming to us as we’re progressing.