TEST Chants of Sennaar: a very solid and ingenious Tower of Babel

Not many people knew Rundisc few months ago. The French studio had only developed Varion, a nice arcade action game, but nothing more. It is in a completely different register that Rundisc partnered with the French publisher Focus Entertainment to create Chants of Sennaar, an adventure and puzzle game point & click inspired by the myth of Babel Tower. A terribly addictive and particularly well-executed journey.

A real playful pleasure.

Songs of Sennaar starts very calmly. The player embodies a Traveler waking up at the bottom of a Round and who must advance through the floors to reconnect the Peoples between them. Issue, the languages ​​used are completely unknown to both the hero and the player, so you will have to decipher them to know how to solve some puzzles and understand NPCs. On paper, it’s quite frightening, but the game quickly reassures us: language learning is done gradually and is very intelligently done. Without going into too much detail to avoid spoilers, the player finds himself after a few seconds in front of a lever, with two unknown glyphs. He can then open your notebook in-game (or scribble in a notebook IRLit’s even funnier) to suppose the meaning of these symbols, displaying the word in gray in dialogues or on the environment. The lever puzzle is basic, so the player advances to find these same glyphs further on for a second puzzle, allowing him to confirm his guess or change it. Then the game automatically opens the notebook, with drawings this time, asking you to associate a glyph with a drawing in order to validate your knowledge. The word is officially translated and is now displayed in dialogues in white, allowing you to better understand the NPCs and the environment.

Once this principle has been assimilated, well off we go for the adventure in the Roundbut Chants of Sennaar succeeds in constantly arousing the player’s curiosity. The decorations are refined, but we are quickly captivated by this strange Round and these Peoples, different on each floor, making us want to explore everything and therefore understand everything. Each floor of the Round is therefore unique, with its People but also his language. If the start of the adventure is quite basic, the first language to translate is simply decipherable, it’s still a different story afterwardsasking players to make guesses, make mistakes, retrace their steps to talk again with NPCs or read notes in the environment, and sometimes just complete the notebook with a little luck.

Moreover, let us point out that some drawings in the notebook are quite disingenuous, representing the word to be translated quite poorly, which gives rise to a lot of frustration. Especially since if the first language is similar to ours and therefore easy, others have more particular turns of phrase, their own rules of language that we will have to learn well to understand everything. The linguists are over the moon, but even for the others, well it’s a real playful pleasure. It’s a shame that the dialogues are so brief, because the title offers a real scenario with a strong message which takes on its full meaning towards the end of the adventure, on the theme of lost communication. A message that is a bit of a burden to the players, it’s ironic, but our own experience was totally different: we solved a few puzzles by exchanging with other players, and therefore by communicating. Like what.

Overall, Songs of Sennaar remains a thinking game point & click which does not help the player. Besides being able to highlight the interactive elements in the setting, there are no clues from the game, it’s up to the player to figure it out. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, the title is very well thought out from start to finish, it’s a pleasure to rack your brains, even if some back and forth is obligatory to translate all the glyphsnotably thanks to sculptures with text which would have deserved a little scribble in the notebook in-game to avoid multiple trips back. Teleporters are present, but you still have to walk and get lost, the environments sometimes being a little labyrinthine.

Truly ingenious puzzles.

In addition to glyph translation, Chants of Sennaar is primarily a puzzle game, with some truly ingenious puzzles. They are obviously based on understanding the language, but even by mastering the glyphs, you have to warm up your brain, one of the riddles reminded us of our long nocturnal hours on Mystery. Groping, trying, messing up, guessing, understanding, all this gives a real feeling of pleasure when the solution is finally found, often accompanied by racing music. It must be said that, the rest of the time, the sound design of the game is quite poorwith little ambient noises and onomatopoeia during the dialogues, obviously simplistic, but no real captivating music the rest of the time, too bad.

In addition to very succinct dialogues, due to the language barrier, Songs of Sennaar includes a mechanics of gameplay here too a little shaky: the infiltration. THE Traveler is not necessarily welcome on every floor of the Round, you have to avoid the enemies, it’s quite tedious and really not interesting, we would have done without it, but fortunately, these sequences are in the minority in the adventure. And then, even after a forced return to the last save point (the entrance to the room, phew), there remains the pleasure of admiring this sublime artistic direction. Rundisc had fun, with unique floors inspired by different cultures, it’s a feast for the eyesthe environments are magnificent, with a style strongly based on that of Jean “Mœbius” Giraud, who had already inspired Sand not long ago.

Songs of Sennaar, it’s the very good surprise of the year on the French side. The title revisits the myth of Babel Tower with subtlety and ingenuity, the idea of ​​translating languages ​​to solve puzzles is a constant pleasure, the progressive difficulty allows you to understand the mechanics well before embarking on advanced puzzles, which also results in a good lifespan: even without too much difficulty, the game ends in around ten hours, count a little more if you get stuck on a few puzzles. Well, that takes into account the somewhat tedious round trips, but who cares, the settings are so beautiful.

Chants of Sennaar is available on PC, PlayStation, Xbox and Switch, you can find it on Gamesplanet or via PSN cards sold on Amazon, Cdiscount And Fnac.

Clint008 Editor – Tester