Despite some frustrating stealth sections and navigation, Chants of Sennaar is full of compelling puzzles based on decoding language.
Early on in Chants of Sennaar, in a walled garden, someone spoke to me in a language I couldn’t understand. From their posture and the shaking of their head, though, it was clear they were speaking about the dead plant standing next to them. An hour later, I’d come back to this conversation with more knowledge and understand everything they had to say. But this first time, although I missed some important context, I got the gist, and I sympathized; I’ve killed my share of plants, too.
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Chants of Sennaar is a language-based puzzle game based on the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. In this retelling, your character makes their way through five floors of a tower, each of which is home to a different community with a different language. Using a pictorial journal, you assign every word you find to a picture, slowly piecing together each language as you go. You use the words you learn to solve other puzzles, navigate the tower, and understand what others are saying. All this is made possible through decoding language — and I can’t overstate how fun the process is.
The game runs beautifully on Switch, assuming you can put up with some annoying autocorrects (not the game’s fault) when you’re writing in your journal. The huge vertical towers and tiled corridors that make up the backgrounds are stunning, and the Middle Eastern architecture effectively communicates each community’s atmosphere, from an imposing gated castle to a laid-back, artistic city with a dark secret.
