Review for Chants of Sennaar

Written by
Piero Serra — September 17, 2024

Every so often a game comes along which does something that makes you wonder why no one has done it before. Chants of Sennaar is one such game. It comes from a small French development team named Rundisc and I had already heard very good things about the game – including here on Adventure Gamers where it featured prominently in 2023’s Aggie Awards, which is probably already enough for you to know that this is a game worthy of your time. It has been at least partly inspired by several classic games of old – influences which the developers have used to create an original, captivating and extremely well-balanced game-playing experience, along with some of the most graphically compelling game world design I have seen.

Roughly speaking, this is what I would term a language translation-based puzzle game, which in the way of many genre labels sounds rather dry. However, right from the title screen you can immediately feel the love that went into the creation of this adventure, and it’s clear that this is not going to be in any way a dry gaming experience. The opening few moments are directed in the manner of a cartoon movie, with everything rendered in a simple but effective colour palette. Poignant stringed instruments play as the main character – an enigmatic hooded figure very much like the character from Journey – is awakened from what looks like a sarcophagus, and you can begin this journey up through the echoing chambers into the open air. The beautiful opening scene sets the stage for what is to come, although your work has yet to begin.

After this auspicious start I actually found the first ten minutes or so of gameplay a little unenticing. The setting seems to be perhaps a Mesopotamian or Babylonian style landscape of canals and locks (water gates), with levers which you must operate to make your way through a sort of watery maze: very much the typical stuff of adventure games. It all felt nicely put together if a little uninspiring. Soon though you discover that you are actually at the base of a version of the Tower of Babel, and you can begin to see how Rundisc have used this setting as a platform on which to build something much more innovative. The magic here happens as the player starts translating the language used by the inhabitants of the tower, thereby gradually gaining a deeper understanding of both the culture and the environment in which they find themselves.

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Translations are gauged through two main methods: by listening to inhabitants speak, or by reading from murals or documents. The game uses symbols (which I have learned are called logograms: pictographic glyphs which represent whole words) rather than individual letters. When you hear or read a new word you compare its glyph with explanatory information, such as accompanying actions carried out by the speaking characters, or pictures in books – just like learning a real language. The main character records in a book each new glyph they discover, and when enough information has been collected you are presented with a page where you can match the glyph to a picture illustrating its meaning. If matched correctly, the new word permanently becomes a part of your growing vocabulary. Successfully translated glyphs are then displayed with subtitles when doing further listening or reading, so you don’t have to remember what each glyph means.

You can also type in your own temporary guesses for as yet untranslated glyphs. You should be careful when doing this though: these words will appear in the subtitles too when listening to characters speak, or reading glyphs, and if they are wrong it is easy to throw yourself off the path of correct understanding. For example, at some stage I had mistakenly assigned the glyph for “brother” with the word “drunk”, and “path” with “sewer”, which led to some pretty odd conversations.

To begin with however, the language used by the tower inhabitants – who for the first section of the game are mostly priests (or “Devotees” as the game refers to them) – is crude both in terms of its look and grammatical structure. This makes for some fairly straightforward early translations. As you progress upwards into the different regions of the tower, any early thoughts you may have had about the ease of learning the rest of the languages are quickly washed away. The languages change and become more complex as you climb, and careful, logical thought is necessary to make the connections required to learn the later vocabularies. The difficulty level, though, seems perfectly pitched to me. As someone who often gets horribly stuck in adventure games which are less logical, I was never more than ‘comfortably stuck’ and was always happy to explore and learn more. It’s an intriguing and gradual but wonderfully satisfying experience each time you discover the meaning of a new word. There is no hint system for the translations, but points of interest such as objects and exits can be highlighted if required.

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I wouldn’t call this a point-and-click adventure as such, as there are not that many objects to interact with and playing is more a case of observing, thinking, and making connections between glyphs and pictures. The controls are fairly smooth and logical throughout and the main character moves at a reasonable speed across the screen. An awful lot of travelling around between locations is required (just like a classic adventure game) and the tower is a sprawling place with hundreds of different areas, so it is quite easy to get lost. Fortunately there are teleportation points you can access at key locations to move quickly between the different levels of the tower. It’s perhaps worth noting that as text input is sometimes required, this may be easier on some systems (i.e., those with real keyboards or touch screens) than others.

In addition to the language-learning gameplay which takes up the largest part of the game, there are various action sequences and environmental puzzles to complete. None are bad and some are a lot of fun, but a few are maybe forgettable. At one point the player has to escape from a monster who is roaming around between levels, which makes for a fairly exciting interlude which is very well-implemented and has a puzzle element to it also. There are some stealth sequences which I found perhaps unnecessary, although they don’t outstay their welcome and are introduced naturally as part of your exploration of the tower. At one point there is a seemingly random darkened maze, but don’t panic because there is actually a logical pathway through – you just need that object that’s fallen down a drain!

The whole mise-en-scène of gameplay elements actually made good sense to me, especially when viewed in the context of French games in general which have never been afraid to break with conventions and are often marked out by a difficult-to-define but distinctively Gallic style. As I played Chants of Sennaar I was reminded of two favourite older adventure / puzzle games from classic French software house ERE Informatique: Captain Blood, perhaps the only other logogram-based language translation game (and one which the developers have cited as an influence) and Kult, which shares an oppressively weird semi-religious setting populated by priests and guards.

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As was the case at the time with both those older French games, Chants of Sennaar makes a very strong visual impression. From the title screen and all the way through to the game’s final scene, there is not a single moment where the graphics and animation do not look impeccable. The buildings, structures and sculptural artefacts are all crisply designed, elegant and somehow logically derived. There are expansive vistas where legions of warriors appear as tiny but lovingly animated dots, lush parks with precarious-looking ruins lining them, and secret, dimly lit back areas where lizards slink about in the foregrounds. The variety and quality are quite amazing. 

As you ascend the tower you pass through many different zones of impressively re-imagined and slightly futuristic versions of real architectural styles: Mexican modernism, Futurism (compare the Warrior’s level with the drawings of architect Antonio Sant’Elia, for example), Moorish architecture, Art Nouveau, Grecian village style. The forms and decorations have been executed with a deep level of understanding and a flair for design rarely seen in any genre of computer game. A love of architectural details notwithstanding, I think most players will find all this at the very least an exciting and charming environment through which to wander.

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The game does not disappoint in the audio department either. Whilst I found the musical pieces to be pleasant and fitting, they didn’t move me in quite the way that the graphics did. However, the overall soundscape along with the music – the various bubblings, pings, bells and scribbling sounds that accompany the gameplay – all come together to create a rich and never irritating sonic environment that adds a lot of atmosphere. The non-player characters you interact with do not voice every word but instead just make cursory noises which sound like talking, and these are also quite delightful and at times very funny. These NPCs are charming and interesting in their own right and although few of them play major roles other than to aid translations, their presence brings a lot of life to the tower’s rather stark locations.

At its heart, Chants of Sennaar is a game about the bringing together of a race of people who have become divided, seemingly through their inability to understand one another. There are other good reasons for the fragmentation of their society too, which you will discover as you play, but their reunification process is initiated by the actions of the player. You must work hard to attempt to understand each of their disparately developed dialects and temperaments, and act as the intermediary as the groups reacquaint themselves. I found the process of learning the languages absolutely fascinating, never once dull, and became completely immersed within the superbly realised environments inside the gigantic tower, with all its delightful attention to detail and beautiful forms, colours and lighting effects. There is really nothing here to detract in any meaningful way from what is a near-perfect game-playing experience.