Marie Kondo once said „keep the things close, that spark joy“ and oh boy, does Chants of Sennaar is a firework of joy.
This game surprised me to the bones. I was expecting a sweet little puzzle adventure, but eventually ended up adoring every aspect of it, falling in love with the fascinating journey of deciphering foreign languages, hunting for the significance of symbols and reliving one of the most iconic biblical stories without being bound to religious ideology.
You play as a name- and faceless human waking up without any clue, where and when. You quickly encounter a person guiding you out of your current misery. At first, we don’t understand this person, but slowly, slowly through care- and thoughtful interaction with our environment, we learn and grow, until the point, where we can even decrypt full sentences.
We mostly fill in the role of a silent observer, interacting with various people needing help or just expressing their feelings. Instead of gunslinging or slaying the great evil on top of the tower, we just make use of our eyes, ears and brain to make sense of the dots, lines and circles, we collect in our notebook. The notebook becomes the key and central feature of this game, as the character uses it, to keep track of all the words we encounter. In it, the character draws little pencil sketches of scenes, actions or things, which gives us the possibility to assign the symbols found to a specific meaning. Very clever and powerful is the possibility to note down associations, even if we are not yet 100% sure.
The feeling of success strongly reminds me of the masterpiece that is Return of the Obra Dinn as the game only certifies the correctness of your translation, if we have found all right words on a page. This leads to an increased awareness of your surroundings, because every conversation, every written symbol we investigate, could hold the solution to a much needed vocab.
The art style reminds me of Manifold Garden or Sable with its mixture of a color- and playful, adventurous atmosphere and sharp black edges. The music is cozy and charming and the sound hinting, which signals very clearly, when you found a solution to a puzzle, is fulfilling and well placed.
There is lot of backtracking in the end and a few moments, where I felt lost or stuck. But you are alone on this journey and the game is brutally strict with the hints and help it gives you on the way. As well they made use of some stealthing, which felt sort of dissonant and could have been striped out, in my opinion.
All in all it embraces the puzzling nature of language, especially the fascination of languages, that are sign-based and does not have their roots in the latin alphabet. This joy of learning semantics is tremendous for me personally, as I love to play with linguistics and words and meanings. And to be send on this treasure hunt with words and vocabulary being the treasure, is unique and satisfying. It ticks all the boxes, what I hope for in a compelling and thoughtful game: A driving mechanic, that needs me as a player and is interwoven with the world. And the ability to grow, within the logic of the game-world, and leave somewhat smarter as I entered. Without any pathos and a clever mechanic, Chants of Senior thoughtfully brings to life the tale of the linguistic aberration at the Tower of Babylon. Do yourself a favor and try this one out, it is marvelous!
This game surprised me to the bones. I was expecting a sweet little puzzle adventure, but eventually ended up adoring every aspect of it, falling in love with the fascinating journey of deciphering foreign languages, hunting for the significance of symbols and reliving one of the most iconic biblical stories without being bound to religious ideology.
You play as a name- and faceless human waking up without any clue, where and when. You quickly encounter a person guiding you out of your current misery. At first, we don’t understand this person, but slowly, slowly through care- and thoughtful interaction with our environment, we learn and grow, until the point, where we can even decrypt full sentences.
We mostly fill in the role of a silent observer, interacting with various people needing help or just expressing their feelings. Instead of gunslinging or slaying the great evil on top of the tower, we just make use of our eyes, ears and brain to make sense of the dots, lines and circles, we collect in our notebook. The notebook becomes the key and central feature of this game, as the character uses it, to keep track of all the words we encounter. In it, the character draws little pencil sketches of scenes, actions or things, which gives us the possibility to assign the symbols found to a specific meaning. Very clever and powerful is the possibility to note down associations, even if we are not yet 100% sure.
The feeling of success strongly reminds me of the masterpiece that is Return of the Obra Dinn as the game only certifies the correctness of your translation, if we have found all right words on a page. This leads to an increased awareness of your surroundings, because every conversation, every written symbol we investigate, could hold the solution to a much needed vocab.
The art style reminds me of Manifold Garden or Sable with its mixture of a color- and playful, adventurous atmosphere and sharp black edges. The music is cozy and charming and the sound hinting, which signals very clearly, when you found a solution to a puzzle, is fulfilling and well placed.
There is lot of backtracking in the end and a few moments, where I felt lost or stuck. But you are alone on this journey and the game is brutally strict with the hints and help it gives you on the way. As well they made use of some stealthing, which felt sort of dissonant and could have been striped out, in my opinion.
All in all it embraces the puzzling nature of language, especially the fascination of languages, that are sign-based and does not have their roots in the latin alphabet. This joy of learning semantics is tremendous for me personally, as I love to play with linguistics and words and meanings. And to be send on this treasure hunt with words and vocabulary being the treasure, is unique and satisfying. It ticks all the boxes, what I hope for in a compelling and thoughtful game: A driving mechanic, that needs me as a player and is interwoven with the world. And the ability to grow, within the logic of the game-world, and leave somewhat smarter as I entered. Without any pathos and a clever mechanic, Chants of Senior thoughtfully brings to life the tale of the linguistic aberration at the Tower of Babylon. Do yourself a favor and try this one out, it is marvelous!