Chants of Sennaar

Lizzie Elliott

3AM to 3PM

Saturday, September 14, 2024

Steam

2 Hour Play Session

Description

Chants of Sennaar is a single player game where you are a cloaked figure, going through a tower! But, each of these levels have different difficulties you must face, one of the main ones being language- in this game each level has its own language, and you must figure out the language in order to understand and complete certain tasks that come your way.

In the opening scene, you get to see your main character, a hooded figure- who might have popped out of the odd sarcophagus looking object that you see? Either way it is a click and move type of game, but what was nice is that the further you click the faster you go!
You get to wander around for a bit before you get greeted by your first challenge, some glyphs that I found were pretty straightforward, telling you to go up and then down. You get to hypothesis the meaning though, but later on the game will actually tell you what it means.
You come across several puzzles in the game, the first few are water puzzles, and this is also where you get to meet another person! And learn more of the glyphs and what they could possibly mean. After completing these water puzzles, you make it into the populated area, where you can talk to some people and even play a little card game!
Being in this area, you get to see through the enviorment that something is most likely amiss, as there are murals on the wall depicting some sort of story, warriors who are not allowing devotees to pass through the gates. Wandering around for a bit though, you manage to progress with the help of a child who guides you and helps you sneak into the abbey, allowing you to further progress.
After completing a few more puzzles, like sneaking through the church to complete the four puzzles in there, talking to the man outside the church who helps you find some items you need, and coming across the deceased body of the preacher- which is rather unfortunate, as you learn many people were looking for the preacher, you get to the second area of the tower, where the warriors are.

(Where you first meet the child)

(The water puzzle)

(An area in the Abbey, the glyphs roughly read on the head statue "God talks to you and me")

Analysis

Unfortunately I did not get very far in the game, and I would honestly love to go back and play through it all. But this game seems to be able learning and understanding a culture, better yet their language and what it means to them and how learning it can teach us something in the end. I think some anthropological concepts that can be applied to this game would definitely be linguistics, ritual and perhaps participant observation.

While we get to see this culture of the Devotees (The first language you learn in the Abbey before transitioning to the Warriors) it is hard to understand it because of the language barrier, you can get a grasp of certain terms and interpretation, but that is based on yourself and your view on it- not theirs. So as you go along, and get a better understanding of the language, you get to learn from their perspective instead of your own. Which is where I think the participant observation comes into play, not only are you able to try and understand these glyphs that are their language, you get to somewhat participate in learning it, reading the murals, talking with natives, playing hide and seek with the child. We get to see what these people value and how their language is apart of their culture, not just through means of communication but also through the means of symbolism. A lot of their glyphs have a separate meaning behind them when not used in a sentence, at least this is something I thought. For example, I mentioned ritual, and this plays into the fact their glyph for 'god' is used rather frequently, they hold this symbol, this god in high regard as it is apart of their everyday life, a ritual they do everyday. Not only do they have dedicated places for these rituals, the glyph for preacher represents one person, which also displays the hierarchy they have in place.

This game has a lot to unpack and discover, I think it has a lot of potential to not only be fun but to learn how we can be understanding towards other peoples languages, and maybe take a moment to try and understand why they speak a certain way or write a certain way. Not only is the game also just beautiful, the atmosphere plays a big part, not only is it bright and warm, it gives the feeling of peace and tranquility, even if they are facing their hardships, they are still able to enjoy games, music, pottery.

Questions and Reflections

While playing this, I was able to reflect on my own experience with learning languages and how tough it can be sometimes, how it can really be frustrating when your struggling to understand it. But, I know the rewarding feeling of being able to finally understand something and being able to look at it from a different light with that new understanding. This game not only left me feeling curious, but also grateful for the languages I do know and understand, and knowing that there is a lot more than just words and letters, but meaning and culture behind them.

Some questions I had throughout my time playing:

How often do we take the time to try and understand a language?
How often do people disregard someone's opinion, just because they don't speak the same language?
How much history has been lost due to the overwhelming nature of other languages?
Can we make the efforts to preserve lost and old, dying languages so they don't become forgotten?
If we take the time to actually listen, how much are we going to learn? Probably a lot!

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