The Escapist 3 Minute Review Chants of Sennaar is a puzzle game developed by
Rundisc. You play as a traveler who finds themselves in
lands with no understanding of the local languages but needs to learn enough to
communicate and pass through. The main puzzle is piecing together
contextual clues to understand the different languages of the places you go. As you explore, you'll find art with
captions, signs designating locations, and talk to locals to try and piece together what they're saying.
It takes a lot of brain power to use all
of the context clues and keep track of what words show up where in order to figure out
each word's meaning, and it kept me captivated the whole time I was playing. Guessing the correct meaning of a word
and putting together the fragmented pieces of information you find across the level
made me feel clever and rewarded me with a better understanding of the world and
the ability to advance with confidence. The lack of a map along with the low
detailed land
scape and simple color palette of each section made the
environment feel a bit maze-like. This coupled with occasionally getting a
bunch of new words with no idea what they meant, made me feel like I'd missed
something critical and was about to hit a wall. However, in my 10 hours of play, every
time I kept pushing forward, explored new areas, and backtracked to recontextualize the
words I found, I was eventually rewarded with enough clues and context to advance. When you read a word, it shows up
in
your journal, and you can fill in what you think it means. When you find that word in the
world, it will put your guess over the word. When you do discover enough words to
finish a small pictograph correctly, it confirms a handful of words and automatically
translates them any time you encounter them. It's intuitive and made guessing and changing
the meanings of words easy throughout my playthrough. While the story and characters are thin, their purpose seems to be
aiding the player in puzzl
e-solving, so the lack of an engaging narrative is
fine since it reinforces the game's greatest feature. There are a few traditional puzzles, such
as sliding tiles and several platforming sections where you have to move at
the right time to avoid being killed. While you can fail these sections, you
lose little progress since it quickly reloads the latest autosave, which is never too far behind. These diversions were a fun respite from
the brain-consuming challenge of deciphering a language. The
high contrast visuals are gorgeous,
and sweeping camera moves show off the scale and add some spectacle. Each location had striking and distinct
visuals despite keeping to the simple design. The thoughtful sound effects and
soothing music added to the atmosphere and helped keep my nerves calm when struggling with translating. If you're into puzzle games, or the
challenge of understanding languages, you should absolutely play Chants of Sennaar. Its unique take on the genre is so well
done, I want
them to make another game using real languages so players can learn while they play. It's a brain-tickling experience
that is worth giving your full attention. Chants of Sennaar is available September
5th for $19.99 on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. REVIEW COPY PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER WRITTEN & EDITED BY
JESSE GALENA Closed Captions by @willcblogs
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