High up the tower - but still nowhere near the top - I discovered the bell-ringer’s shack.
Chants of Sennaar review
Would the bell-ringer help me?
How to get him out here to chat?
Three symbols, which meant three words, by the looks of it.
If only I could read them.
Chants of Sennaar is often like this, an objective nested inside a puzzle nested inside an enigma.
See what they suggest.
All quite traditional, written down like that.
That’s because, since this is Babel, the real task is translation.
Astonishingly - Babel, remember - Chants doesn’t do this once but several times over.
What a game this is.
Chants' languages are logograms (logographs?
), or written languages in which each symbol stands for a word.
I had to google this, so who knows if I’m right.
First word in a conversation - maybe that’s the greeting?
Maybe the person’s pointing at something as they speak?
Maybe a word is written high on the wall of a foreboding building.
Maybe it’s next to machinery.
Then the game will start using this word you’ve typed in potential translations of speech.
Does it still feel correct?
At this point it’s all still speculation.
You’ve learned some of the language!
Progress through the opening of doors, the manipulation of peoples and objects.
Because this is Babel!
And because this is an adventure game.
Fittingly, given the theme, there are touchstones for all of this.
It felt like nothing else in the digital on/off world of games at the time.
Chants is filled with this stuff too.
I will move a lit flame around a room and study the walls for the shadows it casts.
All of this invention is matched to an art style that constantly surprises.
The more I played, the more I retreated to the simplest levels, though.
Chants of Sennaar accessibility options
Subtitles.
Change the way hints are displayed so button does not need to be held.
It’s not just the look of the words, it’s the possibility space around them.
Mirror turns out to be beauty.
Lute turns out to be bard.
All misunderstandings of synecdoche, really.
But drunk turns out to be idiot.
At one moment, God turned out to be Fortress.
This is a game with a lot to say, and interesting ways to say it all.
What a fascinating, thoughtful game this is.
