The deduction of icons feels perfectly balanced between not being too spelled out and not being too vague, and I love how each distinct culture is efficiently evoked through their language. Which concepts are core to their culture and common enough that you learn them first? How does their language frame concepts they share with other cultures (e.g. devotees vs impure ones)? Which concepts are so inessential that their language seems to omit them entirely?

Beyond the slow accumulation of understanding, I was impressed by the meta-challenge of forming cultural links, and the eventual ending sequence itself. A lot of similar games feel the need to have a big climactic gameplay sequence to drive home the combined emotion of the story and the full robustness of their puzzle design, but the difference with Chants of Sennarr is that it’s the rare example that actually imagines and executes it well, so I wasn’t distracted with frustration at any point.

Also, what a simple but visually stunning game.

Took me back to when I first played Tunic, though in this case engaging with the translation is the main mechanic. At first, I'd feel bad if I brute-forced a translation with the notebook - it felt like cheating. But after thinking about the larger context of the game, you can't brute-force anything unless you have a general understanding of what characters mean what.

I wish there was more game here - referring back to Tunic, translating was part of the game but there were excellent mechanics elsewhere. Here in Sennaar, there is awkward stealth and super light point-and-click style puzzles. Those criticisms aside - I had a good time with this game and have recommended it to a few other folks in my life.

Even though figuring out words and phrases is the game's main driving force, Chants of Sennaar uses language as a mechanic a lot less than you'd think, at least in any way that's not purely instrumental.

As a matter of fact, languages are treated less as open-ended communication systems, that not only represent but create concepts, than a series of near-perfect, near-equivalent logical cyphers. So much so that the game will never let you assume the wrong meaning of glyphs for too long and will, in fact, go to great lengths to actually avoid communication: it is a very silent, lonely and observational game about closed referential systems. This greatly frustrated me at first, but it does reflect the rigid social structures you'll come across and indeed the atrophy that the lack of cultural exchange brings. Treating language as a puzzle makes sense in a world that is framed by gigantic, virtually infinite physical structures that replicate each social order.

Which is why the decision to use a fixed camera enriches the game's own visual language: by framing the structures for you, it alternates between claustrophobia and fascination, showing what that piece of the tower feels like. So the very architecture of the tower becomes a narrative tool that helps you understand the many peoples you meet, maybe more than their words.

Side note: Cistercian numbers fucking rule

This is an amazing game. (Atm) I've given a grand total of one other game a 5/5, sadly in terms of that I don't think it comes close to the other game I gave that score. But this game is easily 5/5 material.

Visuals: which are phenomenal, games with this sort of cel-shaded style, I always think very highly of, and this game uses that to it's utmost to create such striking and distinct areas filled with so much color to convey the life these areas have, or when trying to convey the opposite, a darker atmosphere, this artstyle just fits so well and does so phenomenally.

Music: I'd say sadly isn't playlist worthy, it's a fantastic soundtrack, but nothing I could bop to in day to day life, it easily helps add emotion to scenes one in particular it does so very well with. But even so I'd say while it doesn't add to my final score it doesn't detract from it either.

Gameplay: Easily the best part of this game, probably some of the most fun I've had in a puzzle game without it being frustratingly tedious or specific. It's a game inherently about language and that's pretty much within the entire premise of the game from start to finish, and communication between peoples. The gameplay is simplistic rather it uses puzzles involving language to push the game forward, and as well your own deductive reasoning, using contextual clues from conversation to words displayed on walls as warnings, events, instructions, it all fits into the world very nicely while also serving as more ways to interact with the mechanics revolving around language. Oh and just like in the game I'll leave a small footnote at the bottom to mention that this game has stealth mechanics, yeah they're aight, not the main driving force of the game, just kind of there.

Story: Now personally I think this game really hardly has any besides the world going on around you, there is no real objective given to you outside of your own curiosity (At least that was what I got from it) and it's your own curiosity that drives the game forward, only near the end does it kind of show the semblance of a story, but even then it isn't the best "story" story, it's more like sending a message about a negative thing we as people do, which I won't dive into due to spoilers. All things considered I'd sort of roll story and gameplay into one, as it very much is more about the enjoyment of the game rather then telling a deep and engaging story.

In Conclusion: This game is amazing, easily a 5/5, one of if not the best puzzle game I've played so far. This game just flows so well, it only took me like 3 or 4 play session to finish but it was like a really well portioned meal, I feel like I got all I wanted out of the time I played with a couple more achievements left over from me getting to the end. Doesn't overstay it's welcome, doesn't introduce weird and convoluted mechanics, it sticks to it's core gameplay it introduces and does so excellently.

I'm a linguist by trade. This game is more cryptography than linguistics. It's still occasionally satisfying as a puzzle game, and I commend those who designed the visuals and soundtrack, but the languages feel far too limited. Some solutions can feel very arbitrary, and the game is in dire need of a map.

3/5, because it's a very strong concept and there's a clear sense of care from the devs, but the longer the game went on, the more annoying navigation got, and the less believable everything was.

As someone who doesn't typically click with puzzle games (see Cocoon) Chants of Sennaar really gripped me the entire way. Figuring out what words meant through context clues alone, making up sentences with glyphs I didn't know was very satisfying and made me feel smart, and the drive of the game being essentially the thirst for knowledge was really unique. The narrative wasn't exactly mind blowing but it engaged me enough that I found myself pushing through to the conclusion and completing as much of the game as possible (22/25 achievements). Highly recommend this one.

genuinely one of the coolest, most original and most beautiful games I've ever played. Because of the premise it's the kind of game you can only really play once in your life, and as sad as that is it made the whole experience of playing it feel so much more precious and singular. Usually when playing games I will unashamedly look things up from time to time, when I get completely stuck or I want to double check that I'm not missing anything important, but I committed to not doing that for this game and I'm so glad I didn't. The difficulty was perfectly balanced for me, there was enough challenge especially in the late game to keep me engaged but i never found a problem I couldn't solve with a little time and effort. ooooo i love this game so much

tl:dr a very satisfying language puzzle game that, in the desire to expand the game's length, begins to focus less on what makes the idea so good and more on what pads the runtime.

This was a less positive review than I was expecting to write halfway through. I really enjoyed the linguistic mechanics and the varying languages. They had visual and sentence structure quirks that made learning them feel like a new puzzle each time. Some of these being a good challenge too. The visuals and the color palette were also a delight. Unlike some other reviews, I, for the most part, enjoyed the puzzles, and the early usage of stealth was good. Backtracking could be a little tedious, but the gameplay cycle was only about an hour to 90 minutes for each floor, so it didn't bother me too much.

My qualms about the game fall into two categories. Some spoilers coming up.

The first one is that the world would have been much more interesting if it felt more reactive to the player. The terminal communication that is encouraged to be left towards the end was a great set of puzzles that had me wondering why this wasn't seeded more into the level design. After all, the heart of the game is visual and verbal translation, so why shouldn't it be emphasized more? I also think that a similar system could have been used when solving language puzzles. People asking for responses you have to try to cobble together instead of everything being one-sided would have made the world feel more alive rather than you being a ghost that no one pays much mind to besides a couple of words. As the levels progressed, the game tried to diversify gameplay. Yet, the language mechanics stayed largely static when they should have been the primary focus (not counting that largely superfluous minigame on the 5th floor that wanted you to get through that floor as fast as possible). Language is ultimately a two-way agreement, and yet chants of sennaar was so one-sided. I may have forgiven this if the puzzles were more than just gameplay. Outside of the immediate puzzles, you're not using what you learned to engage with the world. This is a lean game for better or worse, usually for better, but I don't think it would have hurt to have some optional dialogue/language puzzles to learn more about the world of each floor. I will say the game does have good visual storytelling that carries some of this slack.

My second issue is that the further the game continues, the more it feels like a second game was smashed on top of Chants of Sennaar and shoddily bolted on. The game's overt usage of the Tower of Babel and its own caste system gives the vibe of a mythical era story, which it faithfully follows up on in the first 3 floors and the 4th one flexibly. Then you get to the final floor, and we're now in the matrix... fighting an evil supercomputer that wants to prevent people from talking to each other because it was programmed to be racist? It's described that each civilization is doomed to collapse without help when all you see is one isolated issue per floor that, in a couple regards, feels tacked on. The story elements are so backloaded and under incorporated that I can't help but wonder if there was a big pivot in development late on.

Humans have, for thousands of years and still today, struggle to come to terms with differences in language, culture, hierarchy, and desires. There's enough conflict right there to make a compelling storyline without turning the world into a cyberpunk dystopia.

A beautiful puzzle adventure about linguistics, culture, and the benefits of understanding one another, inspired by The Tower of Babel.

Chants of Sennaar does a fantastic job with its ludonarrative; The goal is to decipher the languages of different civilizations, achieved by analysing environments and conversations. All the while, we learn about their ways of life and what led them to the current day and the lives they live. This dual purpose really resonated with me, and I personally think it struck an absolutely perfect balance between gameplay depth and narrative substance.

I adored the use of different linguistic mechanics that make you turn your head a little when it comes to certain puzzles (as well as the different script styles inspired by existing languages). It may not be as intricate as it could have been, but it’s enough to make you go “ahhh! cool!” when you notice certain things for the first time.
Thinking about it from the opposite perspective, it was clear that a lot of care was taken into simplifying certain aspects to make sure the puzzle solving felt smooth, accessible and rewarding. An example of how this is done is the removal of many “less interesting” words in the glyphs given to you, such as “the”, and “a”. We only have to focus on the parts that are meaningful to the purpose of the game and its world. The translation experience is finely crafted for that of a game player, and not that of a PhD student, which is what keeps it fun!

Many reviews complain about the stealth sections breaking up the pacing, I disagree with this, possibly due to me being a huge sucker for the narrative. I just found that these sections blended in with the journey so well, added in a unique feeling throughout the exploration that otherwise wouldn't have been felt, and did way more good than any harm they may have done by taking you away from puzzles. They don’t take up that much of the game anyway, and some of them had dialogue to analyse throughout! Keeps the brain thinking in both ways.

Great presentation, with an especially amazing soundtrack. Even though a fair bit of the game had me slowly backtracking, it was just too striking of a world to get very upset about it.

This is definitely up there as one of my favourite puzzle games and I recommend it to anyone who thinks it sounds remotely fun. The morals told are reflected greatly within the gameplay, which is also executed extremely well.

An inventive puzzle game is always something to celebrate and Chants of Sennaar is definitely one of them. It's a game all about languages and learning to communicate. It's not just one language; there's quite a few and they have different grammar rules. At the beginning, I found myself thinking how I was going to start putting words and their meaning together but it ramps it up gradually and has some clever ways of teaching you without just giving you the answer. I really liked how the final language in the game is learned by connecting meanings with all the previous languages making the final segment feel like a very satisfying victory lap building on everything you've done so far. Communication and connecting people are, of course, not original themes in fiction but when you're the one learning the languages and bridging the gap between the different peoples in the game, you do feel them a lot stronger. It's an excellent puzzle game and absolutely worth playing through.

A pinnacle for the puzzle genre. Such a refined uniqueness I have never seen from something with such a dominant puzzle setting. Although the game does just enough hand holding to get you started, learning and translating multiple languages, while made easier and extremely basic, is still quite a daunting ask from a game. One which Chants executes so well and tactfully. Its overworld is built with modernity in mind, simplistic controls, and minimal UI, something this game uses as its backseat, letting the player fully focus on the puzzles. A bright and welcoming color palette paints each new area with some dark and dangerous areas/people and creatures to balance the discord of people who have lost the ability to communicate with each other and the harmony the player creates by mending and flowing these languages together. Playing this with a friend was certainly the way to go for me as memorization is the key to everything & that was absolutely not my strong suit. Between my ability to discern the linguistic differences and my friend’s ability to memorize everything to a tee, Chants became such an interesting experience, unable to be found anywhere else.