Chants of Sennaar (2023) Review

I finished this game in like 4 hours maybe? I borrowed it from the library, I had been wanting to play it for a long time and I jumped at the opportunity to give it a shot! Spoilers ahead.

The puzzles are as expected -- I had to solve them using those kinds of fake logographic languages you might get in a lingustics test. What I really liked was that there were actual rules to each language and distinguishable phonemes to them, instead of just random scribbles to each of them.

Each language obviously held a different inspiration as well, with the Devotee language and culture holding a lot of Mesopotamian/Ancient Cuneiform inspo, the Warriors having a Scandinavian/Greek feel to them, the Bards being clearly inspired by Devanagari script and the Alchemists having. well. alchemical symbols as their language. 

There was no clear inspiration for the last group, the Anchorites? I also felt that the puzzles were a bit rushed near the end, and nowhere near as immersive and non-linear as the rest of the game was. I understand they really wanted to get us to the final act of the game, and due to the nature of Anchorite culture we weren't able to speak with them and learn organically. 

Either way, the message of the community and friendship being the true meaning all the groups were looking for was very sweet. It doesn't have a lot of replay value, but it's worth re-visiting every now and then I think! The art style is really pretty and it's nice to just stop and look at some of the spaces every now and then. 

solid 4 stars! I think it's on sale on Steam right now, everyone should take a look at it!