“Chants of Sennaar” is a 2023 linguistic puzzle game developed by French indie game developer Rundisc and published by Focus Entertainment. Since its release, the game has been put up for several awards — celebrating its soundtrack, art design, and worldbuilding.
Before you continue — some housekeeping. This post will contain spoilers for the game, and since an important part of the game is its linguistic puzzles, not much seems to have been confirmed regarding how the languages work. This just means that some of what I’m writing here is speculation on my part, however I believe my assertions to be well supported.*
“Chants of Sennaar” centers around a mysterious protagonist, who awakes to find themself on the base level of a tower positioned in the middle of a desert. The inhabitants of this lower tier of the structure speak a language unknown to the player — and herein lies the driving motivation of the game. The player must use a variety of context clues including shop signs, dramatic presentations, military demonstrations, cryptic murals, and more. After solving the language on one tier, the player advances to the next tier where the inhabitants speak a different, still-unknown, language.
Even though the game features five unique conlangs, none of them include their own phonologies (sound inventories). The player will notice that the inhabitants of the tower speak in ‘glyphs’ that are accompanied by ambiguous grunts. Rather, Sennaar’s linguistic puzzles depend on orthography (written depictions) to convey the meaning of these languages.
This medium is more than enough to exhibit unique features of each language, however it also allows the five languages to convey how citizens of each tower tier interact with the world around them. Let’s explore some of the ways that unique writing systems can communicate to your audience bits of worldbuilding that you might otherwise consider explicitly sharing with them.
Radicals
Radicals are a crucial aspect of Sennaar’s puzzles, as cracking their code can significantly help in decoding the meaning of glyphs within each language. Three of the languages employ a certain radical known as a “locative marker” to indicate that a ‘glyph’ refers to a place — those of the Devotees, the Bards, and the Alchemists. For the Devotees and Alchemists, the place marker takes the form of an unfinished square or rectangle, possibly resembling a room or building. For the Bards, it’s a simple dot underneath the horizontal line present in all of their glyphs.
These place markers help provide information about their referents when combined with other glyphs. The Devotee glyph for “abbey” includes not the symbol for “human”, but rather for “up, ascend” — implying that abbots occupy a higher status among the residents of the first tier. On the tier of the Bards, the symbol for “theater” is derived from the glyph for “comedy”. This helps orient the player to the direction of their drama, which reveals information crucial for advancing to the next tier. While one might expect a glyph for “library” to include a reference to books, however the Alchemists’ glyph instead includes the verb “finding”, highlighting an emphasis on both academia and philosophy in their alchemic practice. In the same vein, their glyph for “laboratory” combines the place marker with “seeking”, while alchemists are known as “seekers”. This imbues what might usually be thought of as a sterile practice with philosophical thinking.
It may seem like these are minute details, but a degree of consistancy throughout a writing systems helps it ring as more authentic. Even a player or viewer who has no linguistic experience is able to recognize patterns in a language’s design. This recognition contributes to your projects memorability and originality.
Relation
There exists some throughlines between a few of the languages that demonstrate their interconnectedness. This not only helps the player solve puzzles from tier to tier, but also contributes to the lore of the game (however, I won’t spoil the ending completely). Aspects of the Anchorite glyph for ‘human/person’ are seen in several glyphs in the other four languages, adding contexts to other glyphs from pronouns to adjectives. I won’t say much more on this, since it’s the most speculative take I have regarding Senaar’s orthography, but this degree of worldbuilding via writing systems is impressive.
Having this degree of connection reinforced the idea that the various aspects of this world exists alongside one another in a realistic way. Linguistic crossover or influence is inevitible when different cultures meet, and so by having observable interaction, these languages appear more alive — rather than quickly contrived for the purposes of the game. They make it seem as though the lives of the NPCs roaming the tiers continue even in the player’s absence.
Aesthetic
The aesthetic of a writing system can help present the audience with a living, involved world by using motifs as a shortcut. These motifs invoke what players or readers may already know about certain cultures or time periods. Senaar employs these shortcuts in its own worldbuilding in a way that seems familiar without seeming unoriginal.
The language of the Devotees shares some of its characteristics with cuneiform, such as its sharp lines and serifs. This coincides with the open courtyards adorned with fountains and palm trees that evoke the Mesopotamian civilizations — the root of Sennaar’s tower both literally and conceptually. The Bardian language uses a similar strategy, mirroring the Shirorekha (horizontal bar) in Devanagari and the Arabic nuqTa (orthographic dot) accompanied by marble statues and mihrabs that evoke a cultural crossroads between the Indian, Greek, and Arab worlds. The tower itself is even similar to the Masjid Sāmarrāʾ located in Iraq, likely an allusion to the game’s namesake: Sennaár/Shinar (a region in southern Mesopotamia).
The Alchemist language recalls other futuristic, science-oriented languages like Doctor Who’s Gallifreyan. The straight lines of the Alchemist and Warrior languages achieve the opposite effect, demonstrating an other-worldliness that is unrecognizable to the player. In the case of the warrior language, the simple but incomprehensible glyphs pair with greytone, foreboding imagery to draw parallels to works like George Orwell’s 1984. The Anchorite language uses thin, stacked lines to appear both digital and mechanical. This highly logical framework coincides with a tower tier covered in computer screens and wrapped in wires. Both the aesthetic of this script and its function are similar to the Mandombé script of the DR Congo.
Being able to draw from real world inspirations allows you to guide your audience in forming a perception of your world and how it works without having to be too explicit in your comparisons. It’s important that these inspirations are applied appropriately, and are not reductive in their reference to actual cultural elements not only linguistically, but also including fashion, architecture, and customs. There have been recent examples of creatives appropriating the aesthetics of a culture without having an understanding or deeper appreciation of the culture itself (more here) — an act that does warrant criticism.
Conclusion
The orthography of Sennaar’s languages are a masterclass in implementing a writing system as a worldbuilding tool, both to reinforce existing worldbuilding elements and to expose the audience to new pieces of lore and detail as they unfold within the narrative. This is why a custom writing system can be so pivotal for visual media projects such as films or games.
If you’re interested in incorporating a custom writing system into your own project, you can see if my work with orthography matches what you’re looking for on my site. There, you can also view other examples of my work. Visit here.
– Jon
