Chants of Sennaar -- The Game for Linguists
Sorry Duolingo, this is how you gamify language learning
I don’t think that many people would list linguistics as a particular interest to them. Most people don’t care too much about the intricacies of their own language, much less about other languages—certainly not the concept of language in general!
I suppose that would make me a weird person then, because I love it. I love learning how words connect to each other; how writing systems develop and mutate over time; how different languages can influence cultural understanding of abstract ideas and vice versa. If you find this even a quarter as interesting as I do—actually, even if you don’t find it interesting at all—you should play Chants of Sennaar, a wonderful game for linguists.
Chants is a 2023 indie puzzle game for PC developed by Rundisc and published by Focus Entertainment. Its reviews are “Overwhelming Positive” according to Steam, which I can easily believe. The game benefits from being a great puzzle, with beautiful artwork and music.
Chants has a “story“, in that you are traversing through places and interacting with people as you gradually learn more about the world; you wake up at the bottom of a sprawling tower clearly inspired by the myth of the Tower of Babel. You find someone who speaks to you, but you can’t understand him. You have to use guesses and implication to guess at what he means until you can confirm his meaning. The setup is nice, but the story is mostly window-dressing; it gives you a reason to do what you need to do, but it uses implication and suggestion to build its world, not grand dialogue or extreme set-pieces. The game is better for it; the point of the game is its linguistic puzzle, and a more specific story would likely detract from the game’s focus.
From a gameplay perspective, you must translate words that you see/hear into ideas which will allow you to understand them. What that means is that you have a notebook where you write down all the words you have heard, and you can make guesses at what they mean. You can make any guess you want, and your guessed response will be substituted into the text the next time you hear the word.
But there must be some way of confirming your guess, otherwise this game would be impossible? Of course, but Chants doesn’t make it easy. Your character will draw abstract versions of verbs or nouns correlating to one of the words you know, though this only happens once the game believes it has given you enough information to make an educated guess. To have your translations confirmed, you have to correctly connect all the drawings on a two-page spread; if even one of the guesses is wrong, they won’t be confirmed. I assume this is based on the mechanic in Lucas Pope’s “Return of the Obra Dinn” where you have to get 3 pieces of info correct for any to be confirmed. It was a great mechanic in Obra Dinn, and it is a great mechanic here; being forced to get several correct before confirmation ensures that you are constantly thinking about how these words are being used, and their meanings, with your guesses continually shifting. That is the fun of this game; you are always thinking and reasoning how each language works, and how to use that knowledge to better guess new words.
There are 5 languages in the game, though only 4 require the full puzzle-solving mechanics I explained above. This is because each level of this tower has its own culture. The lowest floor is made up of “Devotees”, whose culture is primarily focused on religion. Above them comes the “Warriors“, who hate the devotees, and prevent them from ascending the tower. Above them comes the “Bards”, focused on music and art, and they look down on the Warriors. Above them are the “Alchemists”, too focused on their scientific research to interact with the other groups. Finally is the “Exiles“, living in a sci-fi realm where everyone is connected to machines, completely separated from the rest of the tower.
The languages in this game are all unique, and hold several interesting linguistic and cultural traits. The Devotees’ language is mostly simple pictographs; the word for “death“ is a man lying down, “abbey” is a priest in a box. They lack a plural marker; plurals are formed through doubling the word; “I see man man” = I see men. The runic language of the Warriors is made of sharp lines. They have a separate word for making things plural, and they place their adjectives after the noun. They will reuse words that connect two different concepts; The word “Impure” refers to both literal monsters and the Devotees. The Bards have an Arabic and Sanskrit-inspired language. It follows an Object-Subject-Verb word order, making them sound like Yoda: “Food I want”. Both negation and question words (it is unclear if these are real “words“ rather than punctuation) are placed at the beginning and end of a sentence. The Alchemists follow scientific and geometric patterns. It is the only language shown to have a numeral system, important to their scientific research. Finally is the Exiles, whose language resembles computerized bits. The entire language is focused on adding symbols together to create new words, like coding.
Thematically, this is a game about connections. All that exists of a story is here to serve that theme; the Warriors hate the Devotees, and believe them to be monsters; the Bards think that the Warriors are stupid and too focused on fighting. Your job, in the true ending, is to reunite the various groups, and help them break through the stereotypes that they believe about each other. Language need not be a tool of division, as it is when you arrive; it can be a tool of unity; a way to connect ideas across cultures and break down the walls we build to separate ourselves from others.
Finally comes this article’s raison d’etre: I want you to buy this game. It is a wonderful puzzle that will take some serious thinking, but it is a joy. It gave me the thrill of learning to read again, thinking about new words and phrases, interpreting the cultural impact on language itself. If nothing else, I encourage you to try the free demo on Steam, to give this a shot. It is sure to set your mind racing.