Chants of Sennaar

2024-07-26

Review

Chants of Sennaar is a language-based puzzle game, and a very well made one at that. By the time that I played it, it has already received multiple reccomendations from a bunch of high-profile reviewers and video-game oriented channels, so it's no surprise that it turned out such an enjoyable and engaging experience.

The gameplay mainly consists of involving yourself in various groups of people and learning their languages through whatever methods are available, while familiarizing and navigating through the spaces that they inhabit. All of the languages are glyph-based and each of them operate under slightly different grammars and each of them rely on entirely different scripts, each drawn with a different approach. Some make sense, some don't, some are simplistic, others are drawn almost with a flourish. It's truly a treat to try to figure out the 5(!) different scripts that the game asks you to grok in order to progress.

The graphics are simple, clean and well-polished. Obviously, you wouldn't expect photorealism from a studio as small as the one who made this game, but, I can tell that a huge amount of care went into making the game look nice, despite the relatively tiny graphics budget that the game authors had to work with. They don't try to be flashy, nor do they try to bite off more than they can chew in regards to the game's looks. This results in a fantastic looking game, due to how well it makes use of what it has. Simple shaders and flat textures make this game glimmer.

The controls are equally as simple, but they do not need to be complex in terms of what the gameplay requires. You can complete this game with nothing but a mouse or a controller. I will note that the game opts to disallow use of the keyboard for nearly everything except for one function (adding your own labels to seen-but-of-unknown-meaning glyphs), so, be sure to bring/prepare a comfortable pointing device for your play.

The time spent on each challenge and puzzle is just as equally dialed in. You don't stick around with a particular idea or a single concept for too long, to the point where it becomes dull or tiring. Whenever I came across that old feeling of complete familiarity, the game always had a curveball to throw. Whenever I learned a language, I had to deal with a new one, whenever I learned all languages, the game pulled out other kinds of puzzles. In short, throughout my nine hours of playtime, I never once ran across a dull puzzle or a challenge that felt boring.

And the difficulty curve of the puzzles is just as equally well-made. I can only say that I had moments where I felt overwhelmed by a new language, but I feel like that falls on my complete lack of familiarity with non-latin scripts. I suppose my own internal bias in how I recognize icons made it difficult to identify and discern the glyphs of a particular script introduced in the middle of the game. Other than that, I can only say that the puzzles did not feel 'jagged' in their difficulty. No single challenge felt out of place, no single win felt too easy, there were no puzzles that didn't feel perfectly matched to my current gained set of skills and experience.

Additionally, It's worth pointing out that I did not run into a single technical issue throughout my whole playthrough.

All in all, Chants of Sennaar is a surefire reccomendation from me for anyone who enjoys puzzle games. It is a very fun and engaging experience. Go play it.