Chants of Sennaar, a puzzle game where you decipher an alien language (Demo available)

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨fxomt@lemm.ee⁩ to ⁨games@lemmy.world⁩

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1931770/Chants_of_Sennaar/

I don’t know if this is a good community to post to, but it’s a cool game and i want to share it somewhere.

I think i heard about this game in a conlang group. I recently played the demo, and it was amazing. The game’s idea is pretty novel too. You decipher a logographic language based on context and clues, and you have to manually decipher the words meaning, too; so you could translate it wrong. in the “ME ME TOWER GO PRAISE” box, i’m not sure if the PRAISE hieroglyph is actually correct. I love linguistics, and to see a game made around it is awesome.

A devotee saying “ME ME TOWER GO PRAISE” The guard’s have their own language!

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Comments

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Deestan@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
I loved this game. Puzzles that I felt I needed to understand the plot and culture to solve, made the world so much more alive.

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- fxomt@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  I got into it because i love conlangs, i was not disappointed :D The whole atmosphere and world felt alive and beautiful, too.
  
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  - Deestan@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    mi mlatu cimle
    
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Kaiserschmarrn@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
I’ve played it a few months ago and really enjoyed it! It’s a great little puzzle game and was a lot of fun to complete. Albeit I was a little disappointed with the last level but I can somewhat understand that some people might have been tired with the puzzles at this point.

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- fxomt@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  It just scratches my brain to decipher languages, especially since it’s a logographic language. Love those.
  
  And: “GREETINGS STRANGER” “GO UP” (I cheated, i used the wiki :( )
  
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delitomatoes@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Obra Dinn started this trend, Golden Idol games also have this mechanic

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StringPotatoTheory@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
I need another game like this asap, it was so good.

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- fxomt@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  You might be interested in Heaven’s Vault then :)
  
  store.steampowered.com/app/774201/Heavens_Vault/
  
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  - MurrayL@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    If anything I’d say Heaven’s Vault is the better of the two!
    
    Sure, it’s way less polished and can be janky, but the language and the translation mechanics are so much deeper and more well-developed than anything in Chants of Sennaar.
    
    The languages in Chants are tightly defined and very specific to what the game needed, so they’re not really usable outside of that context. But the language in HV is rich and complex, and you can actually learn to write new things in it.
    
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  - Beryl@jlai.lu ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    Heaven’s Vault is a great game with a good story, interesting world building and beautiful music, the execution is a bit clunky though. The good news is it seems a new addition to this universe is in development!
    
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- dustyData@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  If you are open to try a more adventure oriented spin on this, then try Tunic. Where the main game mechanic is translating the game’s manual by learning the language of the world.
  
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  - StringPotatoTheory@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    I didn’t try to figure out the language in this game, but exploring, finding hidden areas, and secrets was so satisfying I need another game like this too. I love when puzzles are knowledge-gated rather than item- or progress-gated.
    
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  - Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    I loved the gameplay and puzzles for the most part (and the adorable main char) but I don’t have enough brain juice to figure out the language D:
    
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  - Cocodapuf@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    I would argue that that’s the optional game mechanic.
    
    The main game mechanic is that it’s a Zelda like hack and slash. The secondary game mechanic is its secret puzzle system and then finally if you get through all that, there’s still this language you can decipher to solve the very last puzzle.
    
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- KoboldCoterie@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  I got you, fam. It’s not exactly the same - more narrative focused, and slower paced - but it will scratch that same itch.
  
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  - shneancy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    i knew what it was before clicking, and i have to say - as someone who thought that game would be perfect for me i was very disappointed
    
    in the interest of not wanting to influence people’s opinions by being the only and negative comment i’ll spoiler my criticism, i still encourage folks to try it, and you can always refund it
    
    spoiler
    disappointed mostly by how janky it felt and how unintuitive a lot of the UI was. NPCs would speak too fast, give no time to pick the choice you want, in conversation other npcs approach you and start talking, my hand was held constantly, i got so many bugs and just, it felt like a pre-release build of a game i’d love if it was fixed, but no that was it- i don’t refund a lot of games but i came in expecting a great experience and the entire time i felt deep frustration
    
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Baggie@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Amazing game, recommend it to anyone and everyone. Presentation, puzzles, story are all top notch. Love it.

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Kovukono@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
It kind of felt like the game was trying to tackle language as a barrier to entry in the same way that Tunic did, but ultimately failed to properly teach. The first language is learnable, but most of the others had extremely frustrating attempts to get the last few words. It fortunately tells you when the word is correct in your pocket dictionary, but if you haven’t encountered the item it references yet, you have to assign it what you think it is, rely on it, and figure out what exactly is wrong.

I get that it’s a puzzle game, but there’s supposed to be a moment of “Oh, that’s how it works” euphoria when you finish a puzzle, not a consistent “Seriously? I got it this wrong again?” and an encouragement for random trial and error due to frustration. It’s cool that there’s different languages, based on different existing language structures, but it felt like the execution of unraveling it fell flat.

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- Butterpaderp@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  I dunno, I disagree with this. If you encounter an item that hasnt been referenced yet, the game doesnt make you brute force it; it’s simply an option. You can figure out most of the words just exploring the world and seeing events happen. The rest are logical deductions.
  
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durfenstein@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Oh yeqh, loved COT. My only suggested change was that there could’ve been even more differences betweeen languages. At first i thought the warriors were basing their labguage around their anger. Where the other races all have a “i love”, i thought it would be a neat touch if the warriors only had a word for “i hate” and had to negate if they liled something

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QubaXR@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
This was my top 5 of 2023 for sure. Wonderful experience. Certainly my favorite of the “learn a language” type games.

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toynbee@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
I don’t know anything about this game, but I’m tired of that one guy spamming it in the comments of RCE videos. The description makes it sound pretty cool despite that.

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