Artikkel
Chants of Sennaar is a love letter to the power of communication and community
I
Ian Walker
I thought I had a pretty good handle on what awaited me when I started up Chants of Sennaar, the latest release from indie studio Rundisc. The puzzle game, from what I’d heard, plays a lot like Return of the Obra Dinn: You're a private detective that pieces together a confusing narrative. And while Chants very much lives up to this basic premise, the overall experience ended up being more meaningful to me than whatever fleeting feelings of satisfaction that I gained by solving the game’s clever mysteries.
Chants of Sennaar puts you in the oversized robes of an unnamed character navigating a massive Tower of Babel-like structure that's occupied by a handful of disparate societies. As none of these communities speak the same language, it’s up to you to glean meaning from context clues—dialogue boxes, environmental prompts, and the like—and decipher the glyphs that make up each sect’s vocabulary as you chart a path through the monolith. You eventually use this knowledge to act as an etymological go-between, connecting the divergent peoples of the tower through conversation and breaking down the walls (both physical and mental) they’ve built between each other.
Warning: this part contains Spoilers for the end of Chants of Sennar
The tower’s soldier caste, for instance, initially comes off as simple and brutish. When you first encounter them, their main goal is prohibiting the monks who live on the ground floor from climbing the structure in search of enlightenment. Additionally, the bards who live higher up the tower refer to the soldiers below them as idiots who only love their weapons, and your time roaming the barracks will do little to disabuse you of that notion. However, if you facilitate a discussion between the soldiers and the bards, you'll learn that these warriors love music. This prompts a few adventurous musicians to make their way down the tower and perform a concert for the enthusiastic soldiers.
The ostensible goal of Chants of Sennaar is simply to learn languages and reach the tower’s peak, but its translation-focused side quests like these pave the way for the game’s true ending. Every time you interpret a conversation between members of two different societies, you add a new line to a unique symbol stored in the tower’s communication system. If you make it to the top of the tower after completing every line, the truth is revealed. The glyph has more than one meaning, depending on the person viewing it and the angle they’re viewing it from. People from all races and background can understand this single symbol, and all for different reasons.
I’m not so naïve as to think the real world’s ills could be fixed if everyone just sat down and talked it out, but I’d also be lying if I said that the simplistic narrative woven through the halls and stairways of Chants of Sennaar didn’t move me. Its arguments for solidarity and togetherness—further bolstered by giving the player a key role in uniting a world divided by confusion—make for an emotional conclusion to what, on the surface, is merely a clever puzzle game. Chants of Sennaar is the perfect example of what the medium can do when its artists focus less on violence and guns and more on exploring relevant themes that resonate well beyond the few hours of distraction they give us.
Chants of Sennaar is available on the Epic Games Store.