Review Of The Game "Chants Of Sennaar" (PS5, PS4, Xbox Series, Xbox One, Switch, PC)

A huge tower. Multiple peoples. Different languages. A secret. Ultimately an incredible stay where decoding languages takes us to the top of the tower and its secret

Thanks to Focus entertainment who gave us a code for the game for media coverage and testing. The publisher/developer therefore authorizes us to distribute and/or use excerpts from the game for our production purposes and does not interfere in any way with the awarding of the final result.

A great breath of fresh air

The French developer Circularin collaboration with the renowned publisher Focus entertainmentpresent to you today the very surprising thing Songs by Sennaaran adventure game inspired by the Tower of Babel that focuses on reflection, decipherment and puzzles.

There are moments in life when certain events know very well how to stimulate dopamine in us and playing Chants of Sennaar is one of them. Because although nowadays thousands of games are released every year on all platforms, there are not many games that give us this kind of pleasure. To sum it up straight away: Chants of Sennaar is simply refreshing, innovative, brilliant and worthwhile. This is a title that needs to be part of every puzzle/reflection game lover’s gaming library, and here’s why…

Chants of Sennaar is simply refreshing, innovative, brilliant and rewarding. A must for every fan of brain games, puzzles and riddles.

Chants of Sennaar (CoS) will seduce you from the start with its sophisticated artistic direction, offering a colorful and detailed image without falling into the superfluous. In fact, the game’s graphics are in complete symbiosis with what the Rundisc studio wanted for the game, namely to highlight the different languages of the people that populate the floors of the huge tower that we have to climb. The simpler visuals allow us to focus on interacting with the locals and deciphering their languages.

Because Chants of Sennaar is intended above all to be a game of reflection and deduction in which you have to understand the language of the tower’s inhabitants in order to get closer to its summit and the secret it contains. In addition to its ability to make our brains work, CoS also offers an enigmatic atmosphere that does a good job of keeping us captivated from start to finish. The day begins as we are placed in the toga of a strange long-toga-clad character who has broken free from what appears to us to be a grave surrounded by glowing acronyms.

After climbing a series of steps that lead us to the first level of the tower, we will come into contact with a series of exhibits depicting important events. These are explained by glyphs, in a language currently unknown to us. After studying these murals for a bit, we will have our first official meeting with a resident on the first floor. And this is where our quest to decipher, understand and solve puzzles really begins.

In terms of handling, Chants of Sennaar is easy to understand and does not require any special skills other than your memory, your ability to deduce and your intuition. By the way, don’t expect an action game here, because although certain stages of the game can lead to death, you won’t experience any real confrontations. As mentioned above, the basis of gameplay is simple: discover, study, decipher and understand the various languages of the game peoples, all represented by different arrangements of glyphs.

For example, the people on the ground floor have their own language that is different from that of the people on the other floors. Of course, certain basic words appear again in every language, but are represented by different glyphs. Then you have to know how to interpret them and assign them to the individual glyphs. And this is where the core mechanics of Chants of Sennaar are brilliant and innovative. Because when you meet your first resident, a series of glyphs will appear above his head, allowing you to proceed with the decryption.

This is done with a simple keystroke that opens your notebook, where every discovered glyph is automatically added. By hovering your cursor over one of these, you can then press a key to open your platform’s text entry menu. On the PlayStation, for example, by pressing the triangle button it is possible to manually enter a word to associate it with the desired glyph. Once this glyph has been entered once, every time it appears in a conversation or in an in-game ad, the word you specified will also appear directly above it. The more words you find this way, the more the inhabitants’ iconographic phrases will make sense to you.

But even though your sense of deduction is good, you will surely come across certain acronyms whose meaning is unknown to you. On certain occasions, our character draws in his notebook to illustrate the meaning of objects, events or actions and to give us clues. For example, at the beginning of the game, drawings of an open padlock, a closed padlock and a door are depicted in our notebook. If we pull the lever of the first door, we will understand that they simply mean: “DOOR”, “OPEN” and “CLOSED”. To validate these words, we then need to map each glyph to each of the corresponding images in the notebook. If you did everything correctly, the glyphs will be successfully validated.

When told this way, it all seems pretty simple, but think again! Since each people has their own dialect, the exercise must be started again on each floor of the tower. Not only will the visual representation of the language change, but also some syntaxes in sentences, making things more difficult as you progress. I found that the language of the people on the 3rd floor of the tower was very difficult to understand with its small syntactic peculiarities. There is also the principle of numbering the alchemists, which even today causes me difficulties and prevents me from entering the upper level of the tower, which, in my opinion, is the last.

Understanding languages is the central element of the game and will allow you to successfully solve the various puzzles that are offered to you. There are many of them and some will send your brain into overdrive. Here and there you can find certain objects that open doors or activate machines. But although the puzzles and understanding the glyphs are the main points of the game, there will also be some sequences where stealth is required to gain access to certain locations.

I would have liked these sequences to be given a little more importance, but overall their presence is well balanced. At the beginning of the game we will encounter warriors blocking the path of the followers on the first floor who are trying to get to the upper floors of the tower, saying that they want to reach their “god” at the top. These warriors won’t let anyone pass, not even us, forcing us to try to move stealthily to reach passages that lead to our next destination.

Here the type of camouflage is applied in two ways: Firstly, it ensures that we have to move our character to strategic locations, using walls, beams or other elements of the scenery to hide from the eyes of the guards. This is fairly easy to accomplish, although some degree of trial/error is required for success. The second way will be through disguise. At a certain point in the game we find the Warriors’ Armory and can equip ourselves in different ways. But be careful, because for this you need to study the warrior types on the 2nd floor a little, because the poor arrangement of the outfits will arouse the suspicion of the guards and get you in trouble.

And even if you wear the right equipment, you have to listen (read) the instructions of the generals who order you to perform certain tasks. Again, if you don’t obey quickly enough, deviate from course, or make a mistake, you will be intercepted and executed immediately. Luckily, save points are never far away and the game reloads almost instantly, making our mistakes less painful.

Overall, for me, Chants of Sennaar was one of the most exciting discoveries available in the Reflection/Puzzles category in the Games category. Not only do the mysteries of the story ensure that we never give up, but the immense feeling of satisfaction when we manage to decipher a glyph raises the serotonin levels within us. There are moments where you’ll scratch the back of your head until your hair falls out (unless you don’t have any!), but the pleasure and satisfaction is so present that it’s impossible to put the controller down. So much so that I had to, in complete transparency, ask the people at Rundisc for help to move forward because I want to see the end of the game and see what comes of it! After 17 hours of play and 138 of 186 glyphs decrypted, I’m still not done and plan to 100% complete everything! You will understand here that I highly recommend this game! By the way, there is still a free demo for all platforms. So if you’re still not sure, try these out!

What we really like

Very nice, sophisticated and stylized art direction
Deciphering every language of the peoples of the Tower
The ingenuity of puzzles
Provides an excellent sense of satisfaction when a puzzle is successfully solved
Sound ambience that fits well with the entire game
Very good value for money (15 hours+ for $26.99 CAN)

What we like less

Some languages are very difficult to decipher
Some illustrations are difficult to understand

To find out the criteria for our rating system, visit this page.

Please note that the version tested is that of the PS4/5. The game is also available on Xbox One (Xbox Series), Switch and PC.

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