Chants of Sennaar Review (Hugoos)
Enjoyable game based on the myth of the tower of Babel.
You're trying to climb this tower, where there are different people and cultures on every level, but they all speak different languages.
Your goal is thus to translate the languages in order to understand the natives and their culture so that you can solve the puzzles that will make you be able to continue your ascent. To help you the game offers verification of individual pages of images that have to be linked to the correct symbol/letter of the languages. This is similar to such games as Return to the Obra Dinn and The Case of the Golden Idol. Compared to those games though I think this game allowed a bit too much trial and error where the game tells you the correct translations even though you might only have a vague idea about the correct translation. Don't expect a challenge like translating Tunic's language too, it is accessible to people who are not good in linguistics.
The game does some interesting things with the concept that I will not spoil here and I liked the message the game wanted to convey. Ultimately though I'd rate it slightly below Golden Idol and Obra Dinn, it's just slightly less tightly designed around the puzzle solving element than those games.
There are some things I didn't like, there was too much backtracking for my tastes where I couldn't find a way to walk faster and the main character walks too slow. You already know where you want to go but you're wasting time having to run back through multiple rooms at a snail's pace. It would've been better if you could always fast travel back to the teleport points once unlocked, at least I didn't find this option. It doesn't bring the game down too much, it's a minor annoyance.
The languages are a bit simple, so I think more could've and can be done with the concept in the future, though the story of the game feels complete. The length is okay though, it doesn't overstay its welcome, but I would like to see more games/concepts that are similar to this in the future.
Still I really enjoyed the game, and recommend it to fans of deductive puzzles like Return of the Obra Dinn and The Case of the Golden Idol. I found it interesting to learn of the different cultures and how they perceive each other.
8 hours to beat.