You, a nondescript robed person awake in what seems to be some sort of sarcophagus, you wander down some stairs, through an arch and further up some stairs of a beautifully vibrant yellow world full of clean lines and strong shadows along with a lovely whistling tune that accompanies you. You eventually find yourself at a broken piece of wall that leads out to a glistening man made stream, possibly a canal and just a little further you come up to a door and your first interaction both literally with actions and also with the game's world and ideas.
Before you is a simple device with a handle and what seems to be a sign. Both the device and the handle share a simple two point gear stick-type marking but the sign has four icons. Four characters possibly?
These characters are certainly not latin-script, they’re not arabic or kanji.
It takes you little time to notice the four of them are in two sets of two and both pairs have the same glyph second.
Your protagonist opens a journal to take note of these and now you’re allowed to write whatever you want to relate to them, but what do they mean?
This here lies the puzzle and the main thrust of the game, you can take an educated guess, you can pull the lever to see what happens to further inform your decisions or you can leave it and move on to see if anything else can give you some context.
Not too far on you meet another character, seemingly a little stuck across the canal who speaks to you. The NPC says something shown to be one glyph, followed by another three, you know from your previous fun with the door and other levels that they want you to open a door.
Albert Mehrahian surmised that communication is only 7% words, that more than half of it is non-verbal while the rest was vocal.
The NPC seems to do a small bow and the tone of their voice is certainly not threatening so you can be sure that the thing to do, not only because you’re playing a video game but is right, is to help them.
Through a small series of one-sided conversations the two of you meet, they say the same glyph they first used when they saw you and leave.
After a group of interactions the protagonist notes down with illustrations some of the things they have seen and you can now assign the glyphs to these things.
If you had been making notes you’ll be placing things quite easily but even without you can use some process of elimination.
In a similar fashion to Obra Dinn’s rule of three, these double page spreads that typically are no more than a handful of pictures will not tell you if your guesses are right until you have them all.
Once this is done however each time you see or hear those glyphs again in the world you’ll have subtitles where not only your guesses are used but grammar is corrected because as you’ll be quickly reminded in Chants of Sennaar not all languages have the same sentence structure and grammar can change throughout.
Without ruining the beautiful sights, as you progress up the tower seemingly as with the whole game a reimagining of the biblical Tower of Babel (which is the land of Shinar), you’ll meet different people with different languages.
The game will not always make you start from scratch however as much as visiting foreign countries some signs and other things may show two sets of languages which will not perfectly translate but give you a huge head start into figuring out yet another language.
Each of these floors have different people and different vibes but they are all interconnected and they all look beautiful.
Chants of Sennaar is one of the best arguments for art direction over graphical oomph. I ran this game on a very underpowered laptop at higher settings with no hiccups, no issues, not even a slightly hot machine. Simple may sometimes come across as an insult, but it is far from it here.
Whilst visiting these sights and untangling the puzzle of new languages the only small fly in the ointment swims up to the surface in the form of stealth sections.
I understand those two words alone will be enough to put people into a state of shock, but do not be worried. While the stealth sections are by no means fun or something ever worth thinking about they do at least fit within what is happening and are short and forgiving.
Chants of Sennaar is a beautiful and wonderful game that gives you the right amount of head scratching alongside the joy of feeling like a genius when you get something right or you start to feel you’ve cracked the code.
While occasionally you may find yourself simply guessing in a poor process of elimination, much more often you will notice patterns in the glyphs, how they relate, where they are and when they are used. Your guesses will be more and more educated and very rarely a shot in the dark and even if you are struggling to see what the game is trying to show you the Obra Dinn-like journal will always give you a fighting chance.
Chants of Sennaar doesn’t just play and teach us with the wonders of translation, it shows how it can connect us all throughout its strong, but again simple, narrative and this allows the game to not only let you think “I’m a genius” but quite a lot of the time that things can be nice and you’re doing good in this virtual world.
Once it’s all said and done this game will stick with you will feel good about yourself and that you’ve spent your time wisely and that is something that’s not always easy to say with a straight face when talking about video games.
So come on, you should really give this game a Chants.
Before you is a simple device with a handle and what seems to be a sign. Both the device and the handle share a simple two point gear stick-type marking but the sign has four icons. Four characters possibly?
These characters are certainly not latin-script, they’re not arabic or kanji.
It takes you little time to notice the four of them are in two sets of two and both pairs have the same glyph second.
Your protagonist opens a journal to take note of these and now you’re allowed to write whatever you want to relate to them, but what do they mean?
This here lies the puzzle and the main thrust of the game, you can take an educated guess, you can pull the lever to see what happens to further inform your decisions or you can leave it and move on to see if anything else can give you some context.
Not too far on you meet another character, seemingly a little stuck across the canal who speaks to you. The NPC says something shown to be one glyph, followed by another three, you know from your previous fun with the door and other levels that they want you to open a door.
Albert Mehrahian surmised that communication is only 7% words, that more than half of it is non-verbal while the rest was vocal.
The NPC seems to do a small bow and the tone of their voice is certainly not threatening so you can be sure that the thing to do, not only because you’re playing a video game but is right, is to help them.
Through a small series of one-sided conversations the two of you meet, they say the same glyph they first used when they saw you and leave.
After a group of interactions the protagonist notes down with illustrations some of the things they have seen and you can now assign the glyphs to these things.
If you had been making notes you’ll be placing things quite easily but even without you can use some process of elimination.
In a similar fashion to Obra Dinn’s rule of three, these double page spreads that typically are no more than a handful of pictures will not tell you if your guesses are right until you have them all.
Once this is done however each time you see or hear those glyphs again in the world you’ll have subtitles where not only your guesses are used but grammar is corrected because as you’ll be quickly reminded in Chants of Sennaar not all languages have the same sentence structure and grammar can change throughout.
Without ruining the beautiful sights, as you progress up the tower seemingly as with the whole game a reimagining of the biblical Tower of Babel (which is the land of Shinar), you’ll meet different people with different languages.
The game will not always make you start from scratch however as much as visiting foreign countries some signs and other things may show two sets of languages which will not perfectly translate but give you a huge head start into figuring out yet another language.
Each of these floors have different people and different vibes but they are all interconnected and they all look beautiful.
Chants of Sennaar is one of the best arguments for art direction over graphical oomph. I ran this game on a very underpowered laptop at higher settings with no hiccups, no issues, not even a slightly hot machine. Simple may sometimes come across as an insult, but it is far from it here.
Whilst visiting these sights and untangling the puzzle of new languages the only small fly in the ointment swims up to the surface in the form of stealth sections.
I understand those two words alone will be enough to put people into a state of shock, but do not be worried. While the stealth sections are by no means fun or something ever worth thinking about they do at least fit within what is happening and are short and forgiving.
Chants of Sennaar is a beautiful and wonderful game that gives you the right amount of head scratching alongside the joy of feeling like a genius when you get something right or you start to feel you’ve cracked the code.
While occasionally you may find yourself simply guessing in a poor process of elimination, much more often you will notice patterns in the glyphs, how they relate, where they are and when they are used. Your guesses will be more and more educated and very rarely a shot in the dark and even if you are struggling to see what the game is trying to show you the Obra Dinn-like journal will always give you a fighting chance.
Chants of Sennaar doesn’t just play and teach us with the wonders of translation, it shows how it can connect us all throughout its strong, but again simple, narrative and this allows the game to not only let you think “I’m a genius” but quite a lot of the time that things can be nice and you’re doing good in this virtual world.
Once it’s all said and done this game will stick with you will feel good about yourself and that you’ve spent your time wisely and that is something that’s not always easy to say with a straight face when talking about video games.
So come on, you should really give this game a Chants.