Discover Hour - Chants of Sennaar
Where glyphs do all the talking.
Playstyle: Switch OLED, Switch Pro Controller. No rumble/vibration. Version 1.0.2
And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another's speech."
And so begins the parable of the Tower of Babel, explaining why we humans speak different languages.
The game opens beautifully, showing a drone-eye’s view of a tomb on an ancient cliff. Out pops my character – a robed figure with no name, characterization or history. Mystery is afoot.
The colour palette is awash in high-contrast colours. It sounds tacky on paper, but my first hour filled with bright pinks, yellows and blues was a visual delight.
Within my first 10 minutes, I brisk-walk (because my character walks fast!) from my birth-box down hallways drenched in Valencia Orange, following tutorial overlays until I come across levers controlling a dam.
The Journal mechanic is one of the main features that makes this game unique. For those who watched Blue’s Clues, it’s my character’s ‘Handy Dandy Notebook’ that helps the player unravel the game’s mysterious tower
The foundational premise of this game is gently introduced by guessing the words to “open” and “close” a lever to a gate. In this first guess, you can practically hear the gears ticking in my brain as I figure out where each glyph goes.
At last, after resolving the first and second set of lever puzzles, I meet another person. The cheerful Devotee guides me through the waterways by unlocking the correct doors.
Here, I learned a few more helpful phrases related to introductions and movement. My character, who I’ll now call Robes, also mimics the body language that matches these words. For example, Robes waves when saying ‘Greetings’ to other Devotees later.
This attention to detail provides another hint to visual learners like me to better associate new phrases.
And so, a chunk of the remaining hour is a written rinse and repeat. I decipher glyphs shown in several ways, from conversations to murals, signs, and on engraved items.
As the game progresses, untangling these to understand advanced words and sentences is where it gets head-scratching. Situations do become frustrating and/or funny when I come up with guesses as placeholders, which is my way of adding more pseudo-context by filling the gap until I untangle the words’ actual meanings. In a river of jumbled words that get longer the more I encounter, I end up seeking online guides for about 10% of the tougher ones.
Which funnily enough, were prepositions. These seemingly innocuous words that bridge nouns and adjectives together, such as at, in, across, for, behind, skipped the ‘Cap’n Obvious’ part of my brain.
Thinking deeper, converting glyphs probably turned on the second/third language in my subconscious, which are Chinese and Japanese respectively. Translating them to English wasn’t only an exercise in swapping sentence order, but deriving meaning from two significantly different language branches.
Note: Past the first hour, pronouns were added to the confusing list. Why can’t I just use ‘their’ and call it a day?!
Robes enters the Devotees’ town and learns of their urge to go past a door blocked by Warriors, another group of characters in the game. I meet a child who helps me learn more words by playing hide and seek to get past Warriors.
This unlocks the stealth/sneak mechanic, which is used throughout and frequently in late game.
While it adds an interesting playmode to what could’ve been a repetitive translation-only game, the stealth piece is a bit less refined than I prefer. I’m not expecting a fully polished affair like Metal Gear or Dishonored, but split-second timing is truly essential to its success.
In the tutorial stage, I follow the child’s path and distract a Warrior by throwing sand at the bell. I sneak past successfully, before getting caught in the final bit by the stairs. It takes me another try to figure out that I was 1 second off from waiting for the Warrior’s sight-lines to miss me.
As Sennaar doesn’t have a difficulty mode, it uses stealth checkpoints to decide where to reset a level. For this example, the level is short enough that I’m sent back to the front of the abbey.
So, I learned the hard and tedious way to perfectly time my movements, which meant getting sent back to checkpoints countless times.
When a game that’s focused on exploration and not attacks also requires the player to have even more patience to perfectly-time their runs to sneak past enemies, it gets frustrating in late game where there are a lot of enemies to sneak past.
Yes, although I like the feeling of player accomplishment after many attempts, adding a ‘Skip’ option after a set number of tries would relieve the unnecessary stealth levels and minimally affect the overall story.
While running around attempting to find the Preacher, I come across a hole in one of the walls and a teleportation device. Actually, that’s half of it. The other, more mysterious half is a panel with two differently dressed people sighing, unable to communicate with each other.
Judging from unknown glyphs above them and the empty slots on the right, I make an educated guess that translating different languages is an important plot point later in the game.
Sound Design
A part of the game that needs no improvement is the sound design. The music in Sennaar starts simple but quickly becomes one of my favourites. Robes’ footsteps are clear and steady, while the water flows slowly in the background.
When I ascend the sun-washed Devotees’ town from the canals, woodwind instruments begin playing, adding a layer of wistfulness. It speeds up with an urgent flute when I meet the child, then slows down when I have to sneak past Warriors. A 3-note jingle plays when I unlock a new area that reminds me I have more uncovering to do.
While the scope of the entire game’s music is too large to fit in this initial hour, the soundtrack in later areas juxtaposes each of their themes. This first level maintains an airy yet adventurous leitmotif that is in direct contrast to the next level.
The music pauses in some scenarios. When Robes enters the church, it becomes subdued, emphasizing the seriousness of the worshipping Devotees. Conversations and viewing the journal also quieten the music, focusing instead on the bubbly dings of speech bubbles and new glyphs popping onto the screen. Hearing the pages flip as I turn my journal’s pages is very satisfying.
Closing Thoughts
I discovered Chants of Sennaar from a Game Maker’s Toolkit review. For both its first hour and last hour of gameplay, it succeeded in filling my linguistic itch.
On the surface, Chants of Sennaar is a game about language. I begin as a robed figure thrust into a tower where I don’t understand a single word its inhabitants speak. Mercifully, I have a handy-dandy notebook and some great drawing skills to decipher the glyphs that appear in their speech bubbles.
Chants of Sennaar starts off as a game about language. As the player translating what’s spoken to me, I become a bridge connecting the game’s various characters all trying to understand each other. The further up I ascend, I soon discover it’s a game about communication. It shows how essential communication is for us humans, and how despite being scattered all over the world, our intrinsic need for communication drives our knowledge to decipher new languages and new ways to connect.