Chants of Sennaar

Chants of Sennaar is a logic adventure from the French studio Rundisc, in which the player travels between the isolated levels of a giant Tower of Babel and gradually deciphers the distinct pictographic languages of the individual communities inhabiting each level, without the game ever offering a single word in English or any other real language. The gameplay rests on observing recurring symbols in the context of gestures, images, and situations, from which the player builds their own dictionary and gradually comes to understand dialogues, inscriptions, and puzzle mechanics needed to progress to the higher levels of the tower, without anyone literally translating anything for them.

Each level of the tower represents a distinct culture with its own visual identity, color palette, and type of puzzles, from a religiously-tinged community of monks through a military order and a merchant bureaucracy to a civilization obsessed with technology, and the player gradually discovers the connections and shared history among them that the tower's inhabitants themselves are unaware of. On PlayStation 5, the game presents a clean, illustrative visual style reminiscent of a moving book illustration and simple, meditative music, which lets the process of deciphering the language stand out as the main gameplay and emotional experience of the entire journey through the tower.

The game's concept draws on the biblical story of the Tower of Babel and turns the language barrier between civilizations into the central gameplay mechanic instead of mere set dressing, which was received by critics as an inventive and refreshing approach to the logic game genre. The game earned recognition for its originality and sensitive treatment of the theme of communication and understanding between different cultures. To this day, Chants of Sennaar is a valued example of how language itself can be turned into a fascinating game system that entertains precisely because the player never gets an easy explanation for free but must earn it through their own observation.

Why play it: For lovers of logic games built on solving the language itself, it's an original puzzle that rewards patient observation without unnecessary hints.