Warning
This is one of those games that must be experienced raw to get the full picture.

The appeal is the journey, as cliché as that might sound.

TL;DR: it’s great, go play it.

These last few days, I got hooked by Chants of Sennaar: a puzzle game where the goal is to uncover the language of a group of people by getting exposed to it.
It’s exploration-based, so the learning path takes a laissez-faire approach. There are a few paths that can be taken up to a roadblock, and, overcoming said roadblock triggers story progression.

As mentioned, the crux of the game is to uncover the language of the people you interact with, and the soft progression happens by way of validating your guesses, which happens in a very satisfying loop:

1. Learn Glyph by stumbling upon it naturally
2. Guess its meaning, based on current context (or don’t, usually the first time you learn a glyph is too broad to understand or guess anything)
3. Explore, see the glyph being used in different ways and contexts
4. Hone your guess

Certain interactions will, then, trigger a “validation” on your in-game notebook: a picture illustrates a meaning, which you can associate with a glyph. Guess right, and you’ll have a verified translation for it.

Later on, this game loop gets expanded with what we may call “glyph association”: you get a “rosetta stone” with a phrase written in a dialect you already have translations for.
The same phrase is written in another dialect, which you can then translate.

Similarly, on the last floor of the tower, there is a set of association puzzles that require turning dials to align translations in all previous dialects – it’s super fun, sad that it’s used so little.

It’s remarkable how much this simple concept can be expanded upon, and at what depths the team behind this game were able to push it.

I truly believe that minimalism was the key artistic language adopted by them, as evidenced by the often absent music. The game is mostly quiet, filled only by ambient sounds – which does plenty on the immersion the game has – but, whenever there is music, it’s spot on. It only elevates the scene being presented.

The same can be said for the visual language the game takes. The mixture of hand-drawn, flat, stylized assets, then-made three-dimensional, makes it stand out right away. That and the camera work, which in several occasions does wonders to present the mundane imagery in a new point of view, there only to remind you how astounding the graphics are.

Since dialog is scarce, and most of what you learn from the environment is through snippets of information, all of these artistic languages are used to communicate with the player in a very obvious way.

A clear example of that is through the use of color on each floor of the tower (the inside of the wall is the first time the color changes so abruptly, and it’s done in a way that instantly communicates the mood of the warriors: cold, calculated, dangerous).

Another is through each culture’s people design, and even their own glyphs: warriors’ are very angular, square; bard’s are elongated, full of curves.

A third and final example that struck me is in how certain glyphs have the same meaning, but are translated in different ways. That’s a reflection of each culture, and how they interpret a given concept. That plays a huge role at the whole of the game.

Although I mostly loved this game, there are two things I wish would be different. I’m not a game developer, so I have no clue how I’d do that. It’s just that they didn’t quite line up with my personal experience and what I wanted out of this game.

They aren’t even remotely relevant enough to warrant dismissing the game entirely, and I suspect they mostly span out of my choice to play this game on a mouse and keyboard, but nevertheless, I thought I’d leave them here:

1. I don’t think the sneaking-based puzzles play well to the strengths of the game, and I didn’t particularly enjoy them.
2. Also the game is mostly about learning these people’s culture and absorbing what’s around. Once that’s done, the story leads the game to a close in a satisfying way. However, the very last act of the game, although quite a fun concept, didn’t really do it for me.
   I had the impression the true ending would be just as impactful if it was presented before the “fake ending”.

All of this to say, it’s truly impressive how much we as humans are able to communicate using nothing but iconography and visual interpretation. Chants of Sennaar demonstrates how deep we can reach with so little information, expanding an environment that oozes culture, and that you’ll be more and more intrigued to learn about.