Chants of Sennaar
In this award-winning puzzle adventure game, play as the Traveler on a quest to reunite the Peoples of the Tower. Observe, listen, and decipher ancient languages in a fascinating universe inspired by the Myth of Babel.
Chants of Sennaar is a puzzle, adventure and singleplayer game
developed by Rundisc
and published by Focus Entertainment.
Released on September 05th 2023 is available only on Windows
in 14 languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish - Spain, Czech, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese - Brazil, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish - Latin America and Traditional Chinese.
It has received 19,503 reviews of which 19,180 were positive and 323 were negative resulting in an impressive rating of 9.6 out of 10. 😍
The game is currently priced at 12.99€ on Steam and has a 35% discount.
The Steam community has classified Chants of Sennaar into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
Get an in-depth look at Chants of Sennaar through various videos and screenshots.
Requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10 64-bit
- Processor: AMD FX-6300/Intel Core i3-6100
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: 1GB VRAM, Intel HD Graphics 530
- Storage: 601 MB available space
- Additional Notes: 30 FPS average, 1920x1080 with High preset
Reviews
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
Think about it: Abrahamic God is the OG union buster. People got together, started building a tower, he didn't like it so he gimped their ability to communicate. Therefore, either union busting is biblical (and... ethical? If you're into that), or he's the proto Evil CEO. The friend that recommended this game to me called it "Unmaking the sins of God" and that just about sums it up perfectly. The Tower of Babel is built (sort of) but its inhabitants can't communicate, don't understand each other and as such are in conflict, which isolates them even more. So, who's a better mediator than you, who doesn't understand any of them? In the beginning was the Word For the record, even though the concept of the game is based on a biblical story, and the game's aesthetic can probably be described as "neo-mesopotamian", that's pretty much where the connections end. The story and the world are their own things. You start the game knowing literally nothing. Luckily, you get eased into your first language by a mixture of machinery labels and gesticulation from a helpful local - but that's merely a tiny foothold. There's still going to be a lot of guessing, inferring, mistakes - with words and grammar both. This one time, I understood a man thanking me as "Are you stupid?". I was, as you can guess, pretty confused... In this moment I am euphoric The game allows you to freely annotate glyphs you've found. Unlike in [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/774201/Heavens_Vault/?snr=1_1056_ajaxgetfilteredrecommendations_1056_curator-tabs&curator_clanid=42922988]Heaven's Vault , you don't get any guesses from the protagonist (who's completely silent), so the pleasant process of deduction is that much more satisfying. After you've encountered a few glyphs, the game opens up a "test sheet". It contains drawings of concepts, and it's up to you to assign a glyph to each of them. If you get them all right, you'll get them locked in, and the definitive meaning of the glyph will be revealed. In other words, it's the time-tested Obra Dinn method. And sometimes the revealed meaning might differ slightly from your guess... They have chosen their own ways, and they delight in their abominations See, the language is always informed by the culture - and vice versa. The different peoples have drastically different ways of life and value different things. A glyph might resemble another glyph of a different language, but its meaning can be drastically different. Even better, some words which have the same "absolute" meaning (as in, they refer to the same concept) have different tones, hinting at the culture's relationship to the concept. An example (which is not in the game) would be: you have a group of scientifically minded people in a generally conservative and religious society. They would probably call themselves "academics" or something, while others could call them "deceivers". Both words refer to the same group, and yet the undertone is completely different. Even the grammar can be informed by the culture. How concise is the language? What is the structure of the sentence? Which parts are given extra attention, and which are an afterthought? Yes, this is also something that's in there. Become fluent in just 30 days! And yet, since the game contains a few languages, by definition they'll have to be limited. All of them have maybe 40 words each (that you encounter). While this is enough for the purposes of the game - requests, history, chatter - it feels a bit stifled. At the same time, the words that each language consists of also show which concepts the culture in question considers relevant. They might have words for complicated numbers, but they lack the word for "music". What does this tell you about them? Also, this is a pet peeve of mine: the game's statement is that communication is a tool for peace and unity. I respectfully disagree; and I present the insane levels of hatred made possible by the advent of the internet to back up my argument. Then again, some amazing things have been made possible by that too, so eh, maybe I'm wrong. I hope so, at least. Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! All in all, it's a pretty sweet game. Figuring out one culture and moving on to the next without knowing anything at all is a great feeling. And the ending in particular is incredibly powerful, delivered in a quite unique manner. I don't think you need to be particularly smart to play this, either - the difficulty is pretty low, but not so low that it becomes boring. It's enough to tickle your brain, get it going a bit, but not overheat it. And that's perfect if you ask me. Oh, and an insane 54% of players have gotten to the end of the game. Considering it's not that short - 10 hours for me - that is one hell of a number. Should give you an idea of just how fun this game is to play. [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/42922988/]My curator page
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Alright. Chants of Sennaar is done and dusted. This is an interesting isometric adventure set on an enormous tower where all the world's people seem to live and yet are separated via six levels of said tower. Each level represents a society, be it a religious society, a warrior society, a society of builders, of bards, of scholars, or, well, something else. Each society has its own unique language which features different runes to represent words, as well as different sentence structure in some cases. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3357573204 You play as an unnamed heroine, who wakes from some sort of crypt and whose goal is to reach the top of the tower. In order to do so though, you must learn each society's language and rules. And unfortunately, each society/level of this tower is separated from the others via policies of fear that keeps them divided. There is certainly quite of bit of subtle social commentary to be found in this premise, and one which feels important for people to acknowledge. As you learn each society's language, you will use this to solve a number of puzzles in order to breach through to the next level, all the way to the very tippy top of the tower. In some areas, this takes the form of simple item puzzles, in others, you will play cat and mouse with enemies while still also trying to find necessary items. Some of the puzzles can actually get somewhat complicated. In order to learn these languages, you will need to speak with everybody possible and read everything possible. You will then begin to associate certain runes with certain meanings. These will all be stored in a journal. The game allows you to type in your guesses, and there will be multiple times in a level where you will be given a journal puzzle wherein it shows you various images that can be associated with various runes, and you need to correctly guess or surmise which rune is needed for which image. Completing these puzzles will reveal the actual meaning of each rune used in these puzzles. There are ways to find enough of these puzzles to solve every rune's meaning for each language. It is also possible to miss some of these, and so being thorough is your key goal for each level. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3358324082 You also will find ancient terminals that are/were used to communicate between levels. These have three features. First, they serve as a fast travel system, and you can freely travel between any of these terminals you have found. Second, they serve as an essential story unlock system if you intend to see the game's true ending. Third, they each also feature a puzzle which unlocks...something important. Some of these puzzles will be correctly translating and matching runes from two languages to complete a conversation stored in the terminal. The other puzzles are more complicated and require you having reached a certain point in the story to access them. I thought the level design in this game was particularly well thought out. The devs really put a lot of thought into sensible interconnectivity, and it shines throughout the game. The story itself, as mentioned, is all about reconnecting people who are divided by fear and hate and a lack of understanding due to language and cultural differences. In so doing, people have a chance to do something better with their world. Visually, this has an almost cel shaded appearance. It's a lush and vibrant world filled with really cool and distinctly different levels/societies. The vistas as you enter new levels can be simply stunning and do a great job of showing off the sheer scale of this tower. the actual lives in areas make you wish you could visit them IRL. The graphics style is reasonably unique IMO, and everything is done by incredibly talented artists. The audio tracks are likewise well done with very believable sounds provided by living breathing societies and a soundtrack that is always perfect for the moments of the game it represents. When at certain points, people are laughing, it kinda made me chuckle, lol. I encountered zero technical issues while playing this game. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3357766991 Personally, I thought this was a fantastic and challenging experience where words are central to everything. Very cool, very well thought out, and a lot of fun. I received this as a gift, but it 100% earns its $19.99 asking price. And I'd say there is nothing else quite like this game on Steam. Definitely worth a look. If you found this review helpful and would be interested in supporting my Curator group, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32549618/]Robilar's Reviews , it would be appreciated. Cheers. Also follow [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32732116-IndieGems/]IndieGems for more reviews like this one.
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Perfect game. Wish the endgame was a bit longer, felt like it ended right as you achieve mastery. I was itching to do more full translations. What am I supposed to do now with these languages I've learned.
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Where's that god damn Duolingo Owl at? We gotta force that bird to sit through this and speed run it.
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9/10 When peoples cannot understand each other, they cannot trust each other. Can you learn 5 different languages and help people communicate? What is it: A mixture of point & click adventure, deduction, stealth and puzzles. You wake up in a tower-of-babel kind of world, meeting people with strange languages, and you have to piece together different kinds of clues to translate 5 very different languages. The story: Not to spoil too much what's going on, the setting is inspired by the Tower of Babel story. There is a big tower with 5 different kinds of people in different sections. They each have their own language and writing system, and cannot understand any of the other people. And you start the game not understanding any of them! Little by little, doing some good linguist/detective work, you start understanding a few words, then more, until you become fluent in all of the languages, and realize that the 5 different groups need each other, and you act as a translator to help open the doors keeping them separate. The gameplay: This is a fantastic game! The core mechanic is a point & click adventure game, you navigate around by clicking where you want to go and what you want to interact with (but the game works just as well with a controller). Unlike a true p&c game, there aren't that many objects to find and use, just a handful, instead what you need to do is find written text to read, see what other people are doing, and try to talk to them. Each new word you discover is added to your journal, and you can write your own translation guess for it. Then, whenever you see/hear it again, you'll automatically have it translated, as in "XXX YYY ZZZ", when hovered, will show a hint like "You ... Me". Of course, your guess may be wrong, in which case the translation could be misleading. But when you discover a group of related words, you draw a story in your journal and if you correctly place the words as annotation of the actions in your drawing, they get their true translation. And here is where the game shines: the way you discover these stories is very well done in a variety of ways. Sometimes you find text written next to a mechanism you have to use, like "AX" and "BX" on a lever next to a door, and you notice that pushing it up opens the door, pushing it down closes the door, so you guess that maybe "X" is "door", "A" is "open", and "B" is "close". Sometimes you have to figure out what people are doing, like this guy that approached me in a secretive manner and signed me to come. Does that mean "you follow me" maybe? Does he have a secret to tell me? And then I find him, he says two things and runs away, and he does this a few times, until I realized that we're just playing hide and seek, and what he's saying is "you seek me" and "you find me". There are murals and statues showing stories, with labels either in one or two languages, and there are papers, and many other ways you can learn and decipher some new words. And from not understanding a thing people are saying, slowly you piece together the whole language. And a lot of care went into designing the languages. They're not just made up words in the Latin alphabet, but new graphical systems with different styles and different grammar rules, well thought out. For example, after deciphering half of the first language, I noticed that symbols in a square refer to places, symbols with a c on the left refer to objects, and since that symbol means "garden", or "place for plants", so that inner symbol means "plant" and that symbol with a c means "plant pot". Part of the language design is also culture and relations with other peoples, for example the first people name themselves "devotees", but the warriors call them "impures". Devotees' language has words for tools and plants, Warrior's language is centered on duty, Scientists' deals a lot with numbers and chemical elements, etc. Near the end of the game you can compare words in all the languages and see similarities and differences, trends and commonalities. Once again, well designed languages and cultures. Other than point and click and text deciphering, there are other aspects to the game. There are a bunch of minigames to solve to retrieve some things, one group hates you so you have to play stealthy and not get noticed, there's a monster that cannot stand the light, and a few logic puzzles. All in all, lots of things to do. How hard is it: Moderate, with a bit of logic anyone could finish it. How long is it: 5+1 different sections, quite big, should take 10-15 hours to finish. Level design: Great, a very good variety of means to learn new words, different architectural and musical styles for each section and different designs for each language, good puzzles. Quality: Very good. Excellent graphical presentation, an old book illustration style in a 3D environment, immersive ambient sound and some good music, good UX, plenty of settings, multiple save slots, good Steam integration with cloud save, good achievements, trading cards and Steam Deck support, no bugs encountered. No "wrong moves", any action is safe, and mistakes just roll back a bit of time, e.g. when the monster catches you. Worth the price: Yes. Most positive aspect for me: Deciphering languages. Most negative aspect for me: Not having an index/glossary of past conversations/texts, if you want to talk/see again a piece of text you have to go back to where it happened. What would make it better: Add a way to see past text other than going physically back to it. Add a map. Add more voice acting, not just basic grunts, but invent actual spoken words. Make it harder/longer to decipher the last language, don't cram everything in just 3 terminals. Make the Abbey doorman not chase me away after I literally became the savior of the world. Add more interactions with the people at the end. Also consider: [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/774201/Heavens_Vault/?curator_clanid=25928931]Heaven's Vault , language deciphering. [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/1113690/Senna_and_the_Forest/?curator_clanid=25928931]Senna and the Forest . deduction puzzles but in English. [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/1219020/Kilis_treasure/?curator_clanid=25928931]Killi's Treasure and [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/1186690/Timpus_treasure/?curator_clanid=25928931]Timpu's Treasure , point and click adventure+deduction puzzles, shorter and easier. For more puzzle game reviews, news and everything puzzle-related, follow [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/25928931-Puzzle-Lovers/]Puzzle Lovers and check out our [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/puzzlelovers]Steam group .
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Last Updates
| Steam data | 17 November 2024 12:01 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 22 January 2025 01:07 |
| Steam price | 22 January 2025 20:49 |
| Steam reviews | 21 January 2025 06:05 |
Online players
697
Developer
Rundisc
Publisher
Focus Entertainment
Release
05 Sep 2023
Platforms
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