Chants of Sennaar

Players explore a structure inspired by the Tower of Babel full of people who speak fictional languages. Encountered languages must be translated through experimentation and puzzles. A notebook helps players translate words by showing all the context players have discovered around it, such as locations where it was encountered and non-verbal communication used alongside it during conversation. As players progress higher through the tower, they encounter new languages that must be translated.[1] Different languages have different calligraphy and different language characteristics: some languages signify plural as repeating the word (i.e. "doors" is written as "door door"), while others have a separate glyph for marking the previous or next noun as plural (i.e. "[plural] door" or "door [plural]"). Different languages also can have differing syntax, putting the predicate and subject in different places of a sentence.

Some areas introduce stealth gameplay; if players are caught, they are sent to entrance of the area, where they may try again.[2]

The protagonist wakes from a sarcophagus situated at the ground level of a large spiraling Ziggurat, and begins to climb through the mysterious structure. It finds that there are four castes of people within the tower, each residing across separate levels: the Devotees, who wish to seek a god-like being believed to be living at the top of the tower, but are blocked by the Warriors; the Warriors have a sworn duty to protect the "chosen ones", beings who play musical instruments, from impure creatures; the Bards, who are creative types in all manners of art, but feel isolated not knowing where they come from; and the Alchemists who do study and research and seeking to open the fairy gate on their level that is believed to let them access the creators of the tower, but are terrorized by a monster in their mines.

The protagonist must decipher the language (represented as different pictographic languages) of each caste, using the knowledge gained to gain access to further levels. Reaching the top of the tower, it finds a fifth caste, the Anchorites, beings who live absorbed into virtual reality, opting out of the real world which they find depressing. As the protagonist disconnects one of the Anchorites from its headset, it reveals that the protagonist was created to connect the castes again, as they were separated by a malicious artificial intelligence supercomputer called "Exile". The protagonist must accomplish two tasks: It must disable Exile by breaking into parts of its mainframe and dodging its sentry drones, and it must bring the castes together. To achieve the latter, the protagonist has to act as a translator between two castes, to help them resolve their differences: the Devotees appease the Warriors by playing music and invite the Bards down to their abbey, the Warriors help the Alchemists get rid of the monster, the Alchemists teach the Bards about their findings about the relationships between the castes and help the Devotees with their dying plants, and the Bards play a concert for the Warriors.

Once complete, the protagonist heads to the top of the structure to revive the tower, but trying to trigger the rune does not do anything, and the game seemingly ends with the progatonist's disappointment, restarting at the sacrophagus. This time, however, the world has a glitched, Escheresque quality to it, desolate of most characters. The protagonist must yet again traverse the whole tower, during which Exile attempts to stop the player, reintroducing the monster in the process; once avoided, the protagonist finds a terminal which allows itself to disconnect from its own virtual reality.

Returning to the real world, it finds the Anchorites now also happily disconnected from their headsets and conversing among each other. At the top of the tower, it finally revives the tower using the rune, which displays a pyramid shape that is revealed to be the glyph in all five languages that corresponds to the desire of that caste. The game ends with members of all castes on top of the tower conversing, the language barrier now removed.

Chants of Sennaar was developed by a two-man team, Julien Moya and Thomas Panuel, along with three freelance programmers. The two had previously worked together on the game Varion, released in 2018; while it had few sales, they felt it helped to demonstrate that they could develop and release a full game on their own. They came up with the idea for Chants just at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.[3] Initially, they wanted to have a game about a protagonist that used stealth, but Moya had played Heaven's Vault, a 2019 game with a similar mechanic around language deciphering, as well as the 1988 game Captain Blood.[4] The pair felt that they could better implement such a system into their game. They worked on the game over the next year and a half. Design of the game was influenced by a church in Toulouse as well as Roman architecture designs and from other French artists.[3]

They brought it to the 2021 Gamescom convention, seeking out a publisher to help with marketing. Focus Entertainment saw potential in the game and offered to help fund the rest of the game's development. With the extra funding, they were able to bring a freelance sound designer to help add sounds and music to the game over the next two years.[3]

Chants of Sennaar was released for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One on 5 September 2023.[5] It was developed in France.[6]

Chants of Sennaar received "generally favorable reviews", according to review aggregator Metacritic.[7] Eurogamer likened it to innovative Amiga games and called it "a fascinating, thoughtful game".[1] Although Polygon found the puzzles occasionally frustrating, they said, "When Chants of Sennaar is on a roll, there's really nothing else like it."[2] Hardcore Gamer praised its concept and called it "immensely clever and unique". They especially liked the epiphany of solving what words mean and learning about the different cultures.[8] Digital Trends praised what they felt were "ingenious puzzles", "thoughtfully built languages", an "engrossing setting", and "striking art style". They ultimately selected it as an editors' choice.[9] Commenting its lack of pleasurable hooks, Slant Magazine described Chants of Sennaar as "an interesting and impressive game that ultimately feels more than a bit academic".[10] Push Square "highly recommended" the game, which they found "terrifically unique", though they found the stealth sequences irritating.[6]

• Official website