Video Game / Chants of Sennaar

Divided since the dawn of time, the Peoples of the Tower no longer speak to each other. It is said that one day, a Traveler will find the wisdom to break down the walls and restore the Balance.

Chants of Sennaar is a Puzzle Game from Rundisc and Focus Entertainment, where the puzzle is about figuring out what everyone is trying to tell you.

Your nameless protagonist awakens at the bottom of an incredibly vast tower. Their goal: to reach the top. The obstacle: the different tiers of the tower are inhabited by different cultures, and each of those cultures not only refuse to speak to each other, but aren't even able to speak to each other, as they all use different languages. It falls to you to use context clues, logic and guesswork to understand the various languages of the Tower and ascend — and, just maybe, help bring people back together.

As this is a puzzle game, some of the tropes below may reveal some of the solutions, so proceed with caution.

---

The following tropes, this game contains:

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Played with. The Exile system works exactly as designed, keeping the Anchorites within its virtual reality so that they can ignore the world outside. However, it's also keeping them from communicating with other people and reviving their society, which is why your final task is to shut it down.
• The Alcoholic: The Bellman is so fond of the bottle that other guards will loudly joke about it and there's even graffiti on the outside of his house mentioning it. His love of the bottle is the key to getting into his room to find the correct sequence for the bells.
• Alien Geometries: The finale is set on a corrupted simulation of the Tower. At one point there's a chase scene through a room that's been turned on its side, so the floor used to be the wall.
• All There in the Manual: There is no word in the Anchorite language for themselves — you only learn their name when the UI congratulates you on completing your translation of their language.
• All the Worlds Are a Stage: In two ways.
  • After completing the translation of Anchorite language, you are given the task of travelling throughout all the levels of the Tower and connecting the people to each other.
  • On the final ascent to the peak of the Tower, Exile puts you in a simulated stage comprising mixed-up elements from all the other levels.
• Alphabet Soup Cans: For an in-universe example, the Anchorite language is mainly learned by completing puzzles on kiosks throughout the city, involving connecting various words in each of the Tower's languages with their translations.
• Ambiguous Gender: Everyone. While some people sound more feminine or masculine, there is ultimately nothing about their appearance to determine gender. There are also no gender-specific words (such as "woman" or "boy") in any of the languages.
• Anti-Frustration Features: The game does simplify the monumental task of translating languages in some ways.
  • The words in any given languages are divided into groups of 3 to 5 symbols. Properly identifying all symbols in one group confirms them all as correct, allowing the player to be confident they're on the right track before they know the entire language.
  • You are able to take in-game notes on the possible meanings of each glyph you discover, and rewind conversations you've had to re-read them even when the speaker is no longer there.
  • The Garden level opens with an impossible-to-miss banner with words in both Warrior and Bard languages, both letting the player get their first few Bard words for free and introducing the fact that the Bards are Strange Syntax Speakers. Indeed, all sections of the game except for the first and last begin with a Rosetta Stone equivalent that allows a player to translate words from the new section's language using the language of the section you just came from.
  • Speaking of the Garden, the out-of-universe translations shown to the player are presented in a way that preserves the bards' Object — Subject — Verb syntax, (e.g. "Beauty, I seek") so the words are in the same order as the symbols they represent.
  • In real life, understanding how to read a language doesn't necessarily confer the ability to speak it - doubly so in logographic systems, like all the languages of the Tower. In the game, however, all spoken language is presented as text in the same script, letting you use both writing and speech simultaneously.
  • Any time you've unlocked the use of an elevator, it will always appear on the same floor as you ready for use as a Door to Before.
• Arc Symbol: While the details vary, each language has one symbol shaped like a triangle or kite with two crossing lines within it, which each culture interprets as their most important ideal (God, Duty, Beauty, Transformation, Exile). At the end of the game, it's revealed that the common symbol they all originate from—a triangular bipyramid—represents the connections between all the people of the Tower.
• Artificial Afterlife: Exile claims to be this. It's lying. By the time you hear it, you've seen more than one corpse attached to a no-longer-functional Exile machine.
• Artificial Human: The protagonist is one, having been created by one of the Anchorites in hopes that they'd be able to reconnect the people of the Tower and shut down Exile.
• Artificial Script: Not one, but five logographic writing systems are used over the course of the game. Most of them are inspired in aesthetics (but not always in mechanics) by real-world writing systems
• Biblical Motifs:
  • "Sennaar" is one of the names for Shinar, the region of Mesopotamia where the Tower of Babel was built per the story the game is inspired by.
  • The final section of the game's second ending involves rescuing people from Exile - here, a Lotus-Eater Machine, but the Israelites were famously carried into exile in Babylon until rescued by Cyrus the Great.
• Blending-In Stealth Gameplay: A major portion of the Fortress level involves the player character pretending to be one of the Warriors so that they can move unimpeded. You still need to behave appropriately, though, or you will be found out, and staying too close to some guards for too long may also result in them finding you out.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: If you have at least one unconfirmed word in a sentence, the game will make no effort towards making it grammatically correct, resulting in sentences such as "me like/love music".
• Book Ends: Both the beginning and ending of the game see the protagonist waking up in a strange location and climbing up into the Abbey to find a child that demands the protagonist chase after them. In both cases, the protagonist must do this in order to progress.
• Common Tongue: Inverted. The Tower's issues stem from the fact that there is no common language, leaving the different cultures unable to speak to each other.
• Crapsaccharine World: The Garden is the brightest location in the game and is filled with Bards that have devoted their lives to the arts, but they also use slave labor to maintain it, and regard the idea of climbing the Tower as idiotic as well as the Warriors who practically worship them.
• Creator's Show Within a Show: A screen on the top level shows a battle in Varion, an earlier game by Rundisc.
• Cultural Translation: Occurs when at the end of the game, you translate certain conversations between the peoples. For instance, the Warriors have only one word for anything that lives below them in the tower — Impure — so when they say that, the correct way to translate it is "Devotee". In other instances, a specific word for "monster" in another language might just be "Impure" for the warriors again.
• Dead All Along: The Devotees' missing Preacher is found dead by the player character in the hidden passageway under the graveyard, with it being implied that they were killed when the floor crumbled beneath them and dropped them into a sub basement.
• Door to Before:
  • On the smaller scale, at several points there are areas that require a puzzle to solve in order to reach. Then you can unlock a door or elevator to access later. For example:
    • The treasure room in the Fortress.
    • The theatre in the Garden.
    • The gold mine in the Factory.
  • On the larger scale, discovering a terminal allows you to Fast Travel between any of the previously visited terminals.
  • If you decipher the dialogue between the Bards and the Alchemists, they will build a cable car between the Garden and the Factory.
• Dub Name Change: An in-universe version. Frequently, the names the Tower's people give to their neighbors are different from the ones they use for themselves. For example, Warriors call the Bards the Chosen Ones, while Alchemists call the Anchorites Fairies.
• Dream Emergency Exit: The ending of the game sees you trying to reach your own body to exit Exile. The Devotee child from the early game reappears to help the player do so.
• Dressing as the Enemy: The player character disguises themselves as a Warrior so that they can move around the Fortress. They will continue to wear the disguise even after the Fortress becomes open to visitors from other levels, though at this point you can - and will get an achievement if you do - dress in mismatched armor pieces.
• Easter Egg: Outside the Fortress you can find a radio transmitting a set of coordinates in binary. The coordinates correspond to a small village on the Euphrates in northern Iraq (precisely, the coordinates are: 34.459355, 41.480141), in the center of the historical Shinar region that the game took its name from. These are ostensibly the coordinates of the Tower in the game. Further proof of this is that it's right next to a river matching the one visible from the Terrace where you play the minigames for the theatre tokens.
• Fantastic Racism: What the relations between the different residents have deteriorated to by the start of the game. The Warriors see the Devotees as 'Impures' they're protecting the Tower from, but regard the Bards as angelic "Chosen Ones", who in turn scorn them as idiots. By helping them understand each other, the player can help them bond over shared interests.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The various cultures take cues from real-world civilizations in their languages and aesthetics, as is appropriate for the Tower of Babel theme.
  • The Devotees are Mesopotamians, with many canals and sluice gates and a language that resembles cuneiform. They seem to represent the Classical era.
  • The Warriors are Vikings, with a language evoking Norse runes and a tapestry done in Norman style. The seem to represent the Medieval era.
  • The Bards have an Indian theme in their flowing script and the architecture of the garden, but their garden also resembles something by Dr. Seuss or Hieronymus Bosch. They seem to represent the early Renaissance/early Modern era.
  • The Alchemists are a Steampunk version of Ptolemaic Egypt, specifically Alexandria, in aesthetics, having a Great Library, and their research into alchemy in general. They seem to represent the Enlightenment and Victorian era.
  • The Anchorites resemble a cross between West African and Ethiopian rock church architecture. They seem to represent the modern era and the future.
• Fission Mailed: The start of the true ending looks like the game has just reset to the beginning, all the way at the intro credits. It quickly becomes apparent that this trope is in force when the credits start glitching out with the Exile symbol, and the tutorial area has all the writing glitched out.
• Foreshadowing: Towards the end of the game, you must cross rooms guarded by robots who electrocute you, activated from a set of 4 robot alcoves - except the last room has four empty alcoves and only three robots guarding it. Then, as soon as you open the door to the endgame, cue electrocuting robot number four...
• Gas Mask, Longcoat: The Alchemists wear long-snouted gas masks and lab coats, with their tall hats giving them a bit of a Plague Doctor look.
• Guile Hero: The protagonist is incapable of fighting, and isn't exactly world's fastest runner, but their cleverness and intelligence is all they need to accomplish their goals.
• He Knows Too Much: It's implied that Exile was somehow responsible for the lab accident that turned the Alchemist who found the correct key to the Anchorite door into a monster to prevent him from sharing the knowledge.
• Heroic Mime: The player character never speaks a word, only listens to other people's talk.
• Karma Houdini: Neither the Bards nor the Warriors are punished for, respectively, enslaving their serfs and oppressing, perhaps killing, the Devotees for goodness knows how long. With that said, connecting the Devotees to the slaves in the Garden will have them invite them to stay in the Abbey instead, and they promptly desert their former masters.
• Language Barrier: The Game. None of the Tower's five languages are mutually-intelligible, and your primary task throughout is figuring out translations so that you can communicate with people and eventually let the people communicate with each other.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: Exile turns out to be this, with all the Anchorites being plugged into a computer system that simulates reality for them. The player character themselves get trapped in it near the end of the game.
• Multiple Endings: Two, depending on how much you accomplish before ascending to the top of the Tower. (If you complete all the requirements for the second ending before getting the first, you'll get the first ending and then be put on the path to the second.)
  • "I Did It": You ascend the Tower alone in the rain and the game ends as you look out over the landscape, with the implication that you are trapped in Exile.
  • "In This Together": You ascend the Tower in full sunshine to discover that people from all the other levels are there, waiting for you, and you all chat together, united at last.
• Nameless Narrative: the only character with a proper name in the entire game is Exile. Other than that, nobody is ever referred to by name, though a few do have unique titles.
• Never Bareheaded: All the cultures of the Tower wear masks or outfits that cover their heads, ranging from the hooded veils of the Devotees to the elephant-like gas masks of the Alchemists. No (human) character is ever seen without one, with the exception of the Bellman, who takes off his helmet to drink, allowing us to glimpse the back of his head.
• No Antagonist: Subverted. At first it looks like the only obstacle is the Language Barrier between the different peoples of the Tower. However, as you reach the last level, you learn of the Exile, a computer program that keeps people trapped in a Lotus-Eater Machine and keeps the inhabitants distant from each other.
• Ominous Visual Glitch: The finale is full of them, hinting at the true situation.
• Omniglot: The player will qualify as this by the end of the game, having to familiarize themselves with and master five unique languages to reach the top of the tower.
• One-Woman Wail: Many of the game's tracks make use of wordless female singing.
• Poor Communication Kills: The cause of disagreement between each of the peoples stems from the Language Barrier between them. Once you manage to establish communication between them, they become more cooperative.
• The Power of Rock: The Warriors' love of music is key to their understanding of the other peoples.
  • The Warriors resent the Devotees, but once they learn that the Devotees love music too, they open the door they had previously blocked.
  • The Warriors revere the Bards as the Chosen Ones, while the Bards regard the Warriors as idiots. Once you unlock the communication between them, the Bards will visit the Warriors for a performance.
• Proud Warrior Race: The Warriors take their job seriously. Their main driving force is Duty.
• Reality Is Out to Lunch: The finale has locations connect in strange ways, text is sometimes intelligible and Alien Geometries are at play.
• Run or Die: The very last section of the True Ending section has the monster from the Alchemist mines chasing you, this time not slowed by sunlight. You must quickly find the way to the next room, with the Devotee child from earlier in the game providing the player with a visual hint of where to go. Eventually you're led to a lever which allows you to dispose of the monster, apparently defeating Exile in the process.
• Shifting Sand Land: The tower in which the game takes place is surrounded by an impassable desert, as can be seen from certain viewpoints.
• Slave Liberation: A peaceful example. If you translate the conversation between a Bard serf and a Devotee, the Devotee will invite all serfs into the Abbey to be free. Later on, you can see that all serfs have departed the Garden for the Abbey, leaving the Bards to fend for themselves.
• Strange-Syntax Speaker: While most of the Tower's languages follow the Subject — Verb — Object structure ("I like music"), the Bards instead use Object — Subject — Verb ("music, I like"), which presents an increased challenge when it's time to translate conversations between Bards and other people.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: When shutting down Exile at the end of the game, each secret door will have an increasing amount of patrolling guards, from none at all within the first gate to three in the final one.
• Tower of Babel: The Tower is very much inspired by it; it reaches up to the heavens and is filled with people who cannot communicate due to speaking different languages. It's even designed visually to evoke Pieter Brueghel the Elder's paintings of the tower, with the path upwards being one continuous spiral. Looking at a 3D map in the last level shows it to be rectangular instead, and the Alchemists are somehow mining the structure on their level for metals without it collapsing.
• Was Once a Man: It's heavily implied that the monster stalking one of the Alchemists' mines is itself an Alchemist that has suffered a lab accident. If you connect the Alchemists with the Warriors, you can later see that the Warriors have captured the monster, and the Alchemists are working on turning it back into a human.
• Weakened by the Light: The monster in the Alchemist mines is burned by exposure to sunlight, forcing it to stop at the edge of it, which gives the player safe places to stand even when the player is spotted by the monster. The monster in the final sequence does not have this issue.
• Wingdinglish: With some exceptions, all languages follow the standard English sentence syntax, just with various words replaced by different glyphs.

---