Chants of Sennaar, reconnecting people
“All the land had one language and the same words. As they set out from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they lived there. They said to each other: Come on! Let’s make bricks and bake them in the fire. And the brick became their stone, and the bitumen their cement. Then they said, “Let’s go! Let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose top reaches to heaven, and let us make ourselves a name, so that we may not be scattered over the face of all the earth. […]
And the Lord scattered them far and wide over the face of all the earth, and gave them all a different language; and they ceased to build the city. That’s why it was called Babel, for it was there that the Lord confused the language of all the earth.”
Book of Genesis
This article is based in part on the excellent interviews with Julien Moya (Art Director), Thomas Panuel (Game Design) and Thomas Burnet (composer) that appeared in issue 28 of S!CK.
The birth of a message
No, you’re not in the Tower of Babel, you’re in Chants of Sennaar, a game openly inspired by this myth. Right down to the title, which is the ultimate nod to the myth, the name Sennaar being taken from the land of Shinar, where the tower was first established. Developed by Rundisc, an independent studio based in Toulouse, France, Chants of Sennaar surprised everyone last year with its original, refreshing concept and highly topical message. As a result, it was crowned Best Game at the 2024 Pegasus Awards, and was also nominated for a number of other prestigious awards (BAFTA, Video Games Awards).
The starting pitch for Chants of Sennaar is very simple: you play a tower dweller, charged with reconnecting the five peoples occupying its five floors. To do this, you’ll need to decipher their codes and language, which will involve a great deal of interaction with the citizens, as well as a good deal of puzzle-solving and observation of your surroundings.
If Chants of Sennaar is topical, it’s because the lack of communication between these different peoples has led them to openly avoid each other to prevent any form of conflict. The inhabitants of the Abbey are opposed to the Guardians, a warlike people. They themselves have cut ties with the Bards, who themselves no longer have any ties with the Alchemists. Finally, the Anchorites at the top of the tower symbolize the worst of this situation, since they no longer even communicate with each other.
In a global context where tensions are higher than ever and large-scale wars are multiplying, Chants of Sennaar has touched players with a message of peace and reconnection that is so simple yet so real. What would happen if Ukrainians and Russians, Palestinians and Israelis took the time to listen to and understand each other again? Perhaps the same thing, yes – after all, Chants of Sennaar isn’t here to lecture you or pose as a paragon of world peace. Instead, it uses videogame ludicism to convey a diabolically topical message, a spark of calm and understanding in a deeply troubled world.
At the gates of Knowledge-vania
Chants of Sennaar is what you might call a puzzle game, but when it was released many compared it to Knowledge-Vania, a Metroidvania derivative in which you advance not by skill, but by knowledge. To overcome it, you have to decipher it, understand its codes, a bit like Tunic or Hyper Light Drifter. Both of these games adopted a user interface to be deciphered, with its own codes and secrets. Sennaar pushes the envelope even further, with five different languages to analyze, each with its own subtleties. Devotees will not express the plural in the same way as Guardians, and Bards will place the verb before the subject, which can sometimes seem confusing, and make deciphering a language seem like an insurmountable mountain, just like the tower.
But the game is subtle enough to slip in commonalities between peoples, so you’ll instinctively build bridges and sometimes understand a sentence without even needing to decipher it or understand every word.
“Ah, these two words are different, but in both cases there’s a dot or a dash, which must be their way of expressing the plural.
Deciphering a language is not only a matter of understanding the words, but also of reading gestures and your surroundings. If a Bard points to his hand as he speaks, you can be sure that the word “Me” or “I” is there. Sennaar plays on all these aspects and nuances at once, giving it a puzzle game feel that has earned it comparisons with works such as The Witness, The Case of the Golden Idol or Return of the Obra Dinn. Another reference cited by the developers is that of Outer Wilds, insisting on the freedom offered to players. No two players will do Chants of Sennaar in the same way: some will understand a word based on a situation, while others will decipher the same word based on its calligraphy. This is one of Sennaar’s strengths: each adventure is different and unique, which is what motivated us as players to share it.
Deciphering Chants of Sennaar is done through an indispensable notebook, in which your mute character annotates drawings reflecting words and situations, which you can then experiment with, entering the text you feel is appropriate to describe that illustration. If your “entry” is correct or very close to it, the word is validated and remains recorded in your diary for the rest of the adventure. This notebook mechanism reflects a dynamic that is becoming increasingly common among players: the fact of playing with a notebook, a sheet of paper, a pad… at your side. Who hasn’t – while playing Elden Ring or Zelda Tears of the Kingdom – taken the trouble to make notes on their adventure, with a view to coming back to it later? Sennaar fully embraces this trend, and does so brilliantly.
By the developers’ own admission, this notebook didn’t exist in early versions of the game, or at least it wasn’t possible to enter hypotheses. This has considerably altered the dynamics of the game, making it more natural and accessible. However, if you’d like to go through the whole game without using this notebook, it’s perfectly possible (apart from the first page, which is compulsory). For a while, we considered adding an option that would remove the notebook altogether – a difficult mode in itself – but the developers chose to stay true to their original vision, lest players miss out on this feature.
At first glance, this difficulty may have frightened the creators of Chants of Sennaar, the peak certainly being the riddle of the balance among the Alchemists. But its gameplay is based on a mechanic for which the human brain is specifically coded, pattern recognition and language learning. In a way, we’ve all played Sennaar before, when we learned our mother tongue by watching, repeating and reading. That’s why everyone can do it, that’s why Chants of Sennaar speaks to so many people.
“Behold, the children of men have become wicked in their evil design to build for themselves a city and a tower in the land of Shinar. For they went to the east of the land, and in those days they built the city and the tower, saying to themselves, – Go, that thus we may ascend to heaven.”
Book of Jubilees
Five peoples, five languages
The ultimate challenge of Chants of Sennaar is its five languages, whose complexity reflects the progression in the technological level of the tower’s peoples. From something medieval, we end up with something very futuristic. Even in the design of the alphabets: the devotees’ language is inspired by Latin, Phoenician and a touch of cuneiform to give it a very ancient feel. The language of warriors is based on Futhark, a runic alphabet used by Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon peoples. Bards speak a language reminiscent of the Arabic world, and tend to read backwards, whereas alchemists use sigils to summon demons in witchcraft. Finally, the top floor of the tower relies on combinatorial logic and old-fashioned LCD displays to depict a more modern age.
These alphabets of ideograms allow us to understand the state of advancement of each civilization. The bards’ alphabet, more complex and aesthetic than that of the devotees, testifies to their hedonism. Whereas the alchemists’ advanced numerical system reflects their logical sense. A numbering system inspired by that of the Cistercian monks, who in the 15th century sought an alternative to Roman numbering.
To complete Chants of Sennaar, it’s not enough to decipher the five alphabets and fill in your notebook. You’ll also need to reconnect the peoples of the world, by using remote communication terminals. These terminals also serve as a means of moving quickly between the different floors, saving you long, tedious round-trips, and giving it a very organic feel that fits in perfectly with the game’s universe.
To re-establish communication between peoples, you’ll need to translate much more complex phrases on these terminals than in the rest of the game, in both directions. This presupposes perfect knowledge and mastery of all languages, so you can consider it the ultimate level of knowledge. But it’s a must if you want to unlock the game’s true ending, once you’ve reached the top of the tower.
An artistic direction to decipher
I explained earlier that to decipher Chants of Sennaar, you’d also have to decipher its environment, which is made possible by the fantastic work done on the game’s art direction. It embraces every people in the tower, every language, so that as soon as you step into an area, you already know more or less what kind of civilization you’re up against.
As Rundisc is based in Toulouse, its creators were strongly inspired by the cathedrals of Saint-Étienne and Sainte-Cécile in Albi, and the basilica of Saint-Sernin, all of which have been a source of architectural influence. Sennaar is a treasure hunt, a melting-pot of cultures, languages and histories, both strange and familiar, which we retrace as we progress through the tower. The warrior people are a blend of brutalism and neo-fascism, while the bards are based on Arabo-Andalusian architecture. On the fourth floor, the alchemists’ library is inspired by the Glasgow School of Art library and evokes the art-deco movement. This can sometimes be found in more scattered elements, such as the shields and drakkars on the second floor, which hark back to Nordic imagery. All the elements are there, it’s up to us to fill in the gaps with our imagination.
One thing that’s sure to strike you about Chants of Sennaar is the purity of its user interface, which is limited to the bare minimum to maintain a fluid, immersive experience, far removed from the overloaded ATHs we’re used to seeing in contemporary AAA. On the visual side, the design is very straightforward, with texture-free colors, borrowing from celluloid shading techniques, more commonly known as cel-shading. A non-photo-realistic lighting model that gives the image a “comic-book” rendering, which you’ll find in The Legend of Zelda license or titles like Hi-Fi Rush and Sable.
If I mention comics, it’s because they were a major inspiration for art director Julien Moya’s Chants of Sennaar. First and foremost, François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters’ Les Cités Obscures, featuring gigantic, labyrinthine architectures. Philippe Druillet’s work on Métal Hurlant, a French comics magazine, was the keystone of the game’s first zone, the abbey, with its warm, strong colors. And let’s not forget the works of Moebius, such as L’Incal and Le Monde d’Edena, which created the comic-book imagery of the 70s and 80s.
As far as videogame inspirations are concerned, you’ll have to look no further than La Abadia Del Crimen, an unofficial adaptation of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, released only in Spain in 1987. A puzzle game in isometric view based on infiltration, in which you had to infiltrate a sect by observing them and following their customs. Not only did you have to investigate, but you also had to follow the sect’s routine or risk being excluded, by going to pray at Prime, then eat at Vespers, in much the same way as in Obsidian’s recent Pentiment.
In fact, this was how the first versions of Sennaar looked, with the final version of the game retaining remnants of these early concepts. For example, in the Bard’s house, where you have to disguise yourself to go unnoticed, or a sequence in which you flee from a monster before arriving at the Alchemists’ house. Not necessarily the most successful sequences in the game, but they breathe new life into the adventure. This shows us that the idea of making a game centered around languages only came much later, as did the idea of drawing on the Babel myth, which was seen as a way of reinforcing the understanding of the game’s universe.
The developers also cite Fumito Ueda’s work on Shadow of the Colossus, the idea of creating a quasi-mythological world whose biblical references we only perceive after the fact. A world that feels like it’s been here for 1,000 years, made up of the ruins of an ancient civilization whose outlines we can barely make out. Minimalism and an absence of elements to stimulate the player’s imagination.
“He persuaded them to attribute the cause of their happiness, not to God, but to value alone, and gradually transformed the state of things into a tyranny. He believed that the only way to detach men from the fear of God was for them always to rely on his own power. He promises to defend them against a second punishment from God, who wants to flood the earth: he will build a tower high enough so that the waters cannot rise to it, and he will even avenge the death of their fathers.”
Judaic antiquities
The melody of the link
If there’s one more element that contributes to a common language in Chants of Sennaar, it’s its sound design and music, which, in the context of a mute protagonist, takes on vital importance. This music does not adapt to the gameplay, but is uninterrupted as soon as you arrive in a civilization. And yet, the music of each people has a real identity: for the devout, it’s a rather calm music that evokes the divine. The music of warriors has a slightly Celtic feel, underlining the drama and brutality of their fortress.
Logically, the Bard level has the longest music in the game, lasting eight minutes. Below, in the sewers, the little class is busy bringing them wind and water, and there are revolutionary pamphlets to suggest that anger is brewing. This inspired composer Thomas Brunet to use music from Reunion Island with its powerful roots in slavery: Maloya. Your protagonist may be mute, but the tower dwellers you meet have voices and emit onomatopoeia, recorded by the wives, friends and children of Rundisc’s developers. Devotees are designed to be polite, warriors howl and bards are pedantic. Music and sound in Chants of Sennaar, like its words and environment, are therefore an equally important means of conveying its message and telling its world.
But if there’s one moment in Chants of Sennaar when I really felt I was dealing with an exceptional work, it was when I reached the top floor of the tower, home to the Anchorites. These people symbolize the pinnacle of disconnection: disconnection from other peoples, but also disconnection from themselves. They’re stuck in front of their screens, obsessed with their video games. This is when Chants of Sennaar becomes a work that not only conveys a message, but also questions its own nature and questions the player. Perhaps it’s your turn to disconnect, to let go of the controller, to return to more essential things: human relationships. Sennaar is a game that advocates reconnection with others, but also points to the technology and ultra-connectedness in which we are trapped. The importance that screens, information and social networks have taken on in our lives, gradually distancing us from what’s essential. Yes, after all, maybe it’s time to let go and switch off the e…. [disconnect]
