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 Chants of Sennaar is a language-based puzzle game released in 2023 by Rundisc and Focus Entertainment, loosely based on the myth of the Tower of Babel. Our nameless wanderer is tasked with climbing the tower, with only one slight problem: We don't understand anything that its denizens say. Making matters worse is that each section of the tower is home to a different set of residents, each with their own distinct language - learning the language of the believers on the first level is great, but it's pretty much useless on the second level where the warriors live. As far as gameplay and structure goes, if you've played Heaven's Vault, you're about 80% of the way there, but Chants is a lot less story-driven and more puzzle-y. It's got some rudimentary stealth sections, but for the most part the game unfolds in a pretty consistent manner: You find some new glyphs, you're shown some kind of puzzle (usually dialogue combined with some kind of action), then the game will pop up a page in your notebook asking you to match text glyphs to concepts. It's a really neat game, and figuring out the structure of each language (this is what verbs look like, this is how they do plurals, etc) is a lot of fun.  This is a blind LP. We've obviously played ahead of the videos, but we are very much stumbling through this together. Please keep spoilers to a minimum, although if we really botch a translation job, feel free to make fun of us once we finish that section. Joining me is our band of space detectives, including FPzero, poorlywrittennovel, and Tanz. Updates will be on Monday and Friday unless otherwise noted. Table of Contents Part 1: You help me? Part 2: You me go tower Part 3: Me not love crop crop die Part 4: Plant seek instrument Part 5: Warriors not love death Part 6: Warrior God? Carry weapon! Part 7: Plural impure not build music Part 8: Bellman loves bottle Part 9: Idiot warrior plural be Part 10: Question compass you seek question Part 11: Wine plural me plural be Part 12: Men, we are not Part 13: Me plural seek transform Part 14: Diner closed Part 15: Refectory is open! Part 16: Scientist plural want help impure Part 17: We are the people of Exile Part 18: Are you afraid to die? Part 19: God, duty, beauty, transformation, exile Artix fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Feb 26, 2024 |
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Dec 29, 2023 23:23
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| # ¿ May 18, 2024 13:07 |
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Part 1: You help me? Part 2: You me go tower We start the game by waking up in a weird tower where we don't understand anyone and have to learn as we go. This is the content covered by the demo, and I suggest you try it for yourself before watching these if the game sounds interesting at all. It covers about half of the first level of the tower, and we'll be picking up in the game proper on Monday.
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Dec 29, 2023 23:26
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Part 3: Me not love crop crop die Does *anyone* love crop crop die? I feel like that's a pretty universal sentiment, friend.
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Jan 1, 2024 22:17
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Part 4: Plant Seek Instrument But if Preacher Loves Garden, why isn't he in the garden??? Checkmate, abbeyailures. (It's because he's dead)
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Jan 5, 2024 23:04
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I enjoyed Tunic but I really dislike when games that are ostensibly [Genre] (Puzzle Platformer for Fez, Zelda/Dark Souls for Tunic, etc) decide "Actually, we're going to throw all that out and become a weird language puzzle instead. You want a true ending? gently caress you, time for something completely different and probably not at all what you liked about the first half of the game." Environmental Station Alpha is probably the biggest offender that I know of, but I'm sure there are others. Part 5: Warriors Not Love Death We leave behind the Devotees for the domain of the Warriors, where they tell us a blatant lie. Warriors *love* death, as long as they're the ones doing it.
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Jan 8, 2024 22:34
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Part 6: Warrior God? Carry weapon! After a slightly obnoxious stealth sequence, we can finally move around with relative freedom. How long will it take us to do something stupid and die anyway?
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Jan 12, 2024 22:44
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Part 7: Plural impure not build music The only thing scarier than having to learn five languages is having to translate between them.
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Jan 15, 2024 23:10
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Part 8: Bellman loves bottle We wrap up the Warriors by meeting with an extremely relatable fellow.
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Jan 19, 2024 22:49
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Part 9: Idiot Warrior Plural Be The gardens are, at a glance, a much nicer place than the fortress. But look a little closer and you find something just as bad, maybe even worse: An artist commune.
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Jan 22, 2024 22:30
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Part 10: Question Compass You Seek Question? Not content to simply keep a slave caste in the sewers, we're now being asked to navigate said sewers for a shiny. Truly, the bard's realm is cursed.
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Jan 27, 2024 03:07
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The monkeys will be fed, if for no other reason than they lock a page of glyphs for the bards. It's pretty trivial to figure out what those glyphs mean, but they're not confirmed drat it!
Artix fucked around with this message at 14:24 on Jan 27, 2024 |
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Jan 27, 2024 14:17
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Part 11: Wine Plural Me Plural Be Today we meet the only good bards on this whole drat floor. The Wine Brothers aren't smart, but they are having a great time.
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Jan 30, 2024 00:56
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Correct. We could actually leave right now, the only conditions for going to the next floor are seeing the play and having both the torch and the compass.
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Jan 30, 2024 13:23
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Part 12: Men, We Are Not We're happy to leave the bards behind in this video, but the sneak peek at the upcoming floor is awful in a different way.
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Feb 2, 2024 21:25
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Part 13: Me Plural Seek Transform After dealing with the Bards for far too long, let's see if we can do better on floor 4.
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Feb 5, 2024 22:40
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Part 14: Diner Closed Look, is their word for "a place to eat" actually "diner"? Almost certainly not. But it should be.
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Feb 9, 2024 22:02
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nweismuller posted:Since you've forgetten that the middle mouse button highlights interactable locations, there were multiple interactable display cases in the library you missed. We finished recording the game like two weeks ago.  As with the bards, we're gonna circle back around for anything we missed at the end of that particular section.
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Feb 10, 2024 03:42
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Part 15: Refectory is open! Is "refectory" better or worse than "diner"? We'll let the audience decide.
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Feb 12, 2024 22:24
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Part 16: Scientist Plural Want Help Impure Friends, we've come a long way and solved many problems on our way up this tower. But I think we can all agree that this one was the most important one of all. Crop Crop is no longer die.
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Feb 17, 2024 00:18
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Feb 17, 2024 03:33
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Part 17: We are the people of Exile We've finally reached the top of the tower, where we meet a people capable of putting even the bards to shame. Welcome to the floor of the GAMERS.
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Feb 19, 2024 23:12
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Part 18: Are you afraid to die? At the end of the game, we finally have an honest-to-god villain in Exile. Is this an improvement? I...guess?
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Feb 23, 2024 23:16
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Part 19: God, duty, beauty, transformation, exile Turns out, everyone was searching for the same thing the whole time. It's a poignant way to end the game if nothing else. Anyway, that's Chants of Sennaar! I liked it a lot, although with some time to think on it since we finished recording the game, it's got some fairly large missed opportunities. The big one for me is that it's weird that there's no real changes in language once you learn their glyphs; for a game that is otherwise about helping people communicate and overcoming boundaries, it's really weird that the Warriors are still using the same word for both the literal monster that lives in the mines on the fourth floor...and also the entire caste of people who live beneath them. Like, surely you could have had a "secret" word unlock after you connect two peoples where they either learn a word from the other's language, or update of their existing ones to match their new understanding.
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Feb 26, 2024 22:33
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| # ¿ May 18, 2024 13:07 |
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nine-gear crow posted:At last, now that the game is finished we can finally reveal the identity of the man under the hood: What can't he do? 
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Feb 26, 2024 23:27
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