Chants of Sennaar is a beautifully unique puzzler that does a lot of things really well. The game is at its best when the focus is on the translation. Luckily, that's most of the game. I found it incredibly rewarding to match the glyphs with the corresponding words, and for the game to confirm the assumption I had since the start of the level. It is hard to describe the feeling you get when the once indecipherable language slowly unravels as you progress through the game. This is just one of the reasons why I think Chants of Sennaar is such a unique experience and by extension, a game worthy of your time (and money).

But in addition to having a solid core gameplay mechanic, Chants of Sennaar also tells a lovely story. The story starts slow as it lets you focus on learning the mechanics, but becomes more intertwined with the gameplay as you progress. It culminates in a satisfying ending that managed to be surprising despite me having read the summary on the Store Page. On the other hand, the story also left me wanting more. Mainly because I wanted to stay in the game world a little while longer, but also so it could have explored its core concepts further. But perhaps the devs wanted to end on a high note, which I do respect.

I absolutely loved the games' artstyle and how the sense of scale was conveyed through the architecture combined with the camera angles. Each level in the game has its own distinct color palette, which makes it a little easier to differentiate the levels from one another. Each level also has a little animal you can see sprinkled throughout, which is a nice little addition. My favorite was the gecko.

Someone has added the "Difficult" tag on the Store Page for this game and I would have to disagree. You are given all the tools needed to solve every puzzle. If a puzzle seems mindbogglingy hard and makes you feel stupid (which happened often, I must admit), then the solution to your problem is always within reach after just a little bit more exploration. Mere minutes after you would feel discouraged and saying to yourself "Uhh, I'm not getting it...", the game does a fantastic job of pivoting into making you feel clever again and again. In other words, no puzzle is too difficult, or too simple, they're juuust right.

On a related note, I was quoted a playtime of around 6-7 hours, but I (proudly) finished the game in 12 hours. I then spent an additional hour getting a few achievements I had missed. Granted, I was playing the game with the help of two good friends, and the three of us together made a great team. When we were confused and stuck on a puzzle, we ended up essentially taking turns figuring out the solution, and it felt like we all contributed equally at different times throughout the game. It's a huge plus in my book that a singleplayer game like this ended up being so "coop-able". It was a truly memorable experience being able to figure out the solutions together and share in the sense of achievement. All of us highly recommend sharing this piece of art with one or more puzzle fans in your life.

All that being said, I've noted some less than stellar points as well. While often beautiful, Chants of Sennaar's appeal to minimalism is sometimes detrimental in the way it makes the required backtracking a poor experience. As someone who did not finish this in one or two sittings, I did not manage to maintain a mental map of each area, let alone all of the areas in relation to eachother. This lack of an in-game map led to me getting quite frustrated on several occasions when having to navigate back to a certain "room" by exploring in every direction until I found it.

In a similar vein, I found most of the notebook sketches were able to be solved with brute force. If you have a vague idea what at least one of the words on the page mean, just keep swapping the rest around until the game spits out the answer. Although I realise this probably says more about my own intellect than the developers.

Finally, I found the stealth sections to be a little underbaked. I recognise that they did in fact serve as a change in pacing and to break up the gameplay, but tone-wise the change was a bit abrupt for my tastes. It did not add as much tension to the "scary areas" of the game as might have been intended. Worth mentioning is that the section closer to the end of the game sat better with me for some reason. Perhaps the tension was higher, or perhaps the mechanic grew on me. This is a critique mentioned by many reviewers already, so I won't continue harping on it.

Positives

• Strong core mechanic
  
• Satisfying gameplay loop
  
• Engaging story
  
• Great sense of scale
  
• Beautiful artstyle
  
• Perfectly difficult
  
• Co-op friendly!

Negatives

• Minimalistic UI
  
• Some puzzles are able to be brute forced
  
• Stealth sections are somewhat underbaked

In summary, Chants of Sennaar is a wonderful game that is unlike any puzzlers I've tried before. It left me with so many thoughts on the game that I'm now writing my longest review yet. It brought me ~10 hours of enjoyment and I highly recommend giving the demo a shot to see if you might end up liking it as much as I did. It is absolutely worth its price and a steal if discounted.
Also, don't forget: The bellman waits for the bottle.