Chants of Sennaar
Jul. 6th, 2024 09:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraI had assumed that I would just ignore the Game category of the Hugos, but I saw Q playing a teeny bit of Chants of Sennaar (glassonion recruited him to help try out the nominees) and was like "I have to do this myself, this is awesome", and so I did do it myself, and it was indeed awesome. This is only the second videogame I have ever finished (after It Takes Two, which I was going to review here like a year ago and apparently never did) and the, hm, fifth videogame I have played any of (the others being Mario Kart 8, Unpacking (which I think J and I are close to the end of) and Overcooked 2) (I am not here counting the many, many computer games I have spent many, many weeks or months of my life playing) so this is a review from a position of no genre literacy. But I thought it was very clever and very satisfying and very do-able by me (although I had trouble getting the controller to do what I wanted it to do during the time-dependent "sneaking" parts and for one bit handed it off to J (other J) to do the actual driving while I told him what I was trying to do). Highly recommended if you like codes or puzzles or ever invented a fantasy hieroglyphic language or daydreamed about deciphering one.
Some spoilers:
I was curious afterwards whether there was a different ending if I had made a different choice near the end, so I read some walkthroughs and such, and was surprised to find out that some people weren't doing the videocall translation tasks as they went along? Like, it seemed obvious to me that being the translation service/undoing Babel was the whole point of the game. Anyways, I did appreciate the internet for telling me what other ending I could have gotten if I hadn't been going for the good ending.
I also made one funny "mistake", that I had no idea was a mistake - on the warriors level, I found my way up to the bell tower, and knew one of the symbols, and took a look at the other ones and was like "oh yeah that's clearly x, that's probably y, that leaves z", so I went and played the song, and all the warriors rushed off, and I was like "oh I bet I can get through that one door now", which I could, and it was the elevator up to the next level, but I still had half the warrior language untranslated, and J and Q were like "uhhhh" and explained that actually there was like half that level still that I hadn't even seen and I was not supposed to do that. So I had to run around the rest of the level looking at the replays of what would have happened - apparently there was a whole activity where I would have gotten to pick up and put down a box - and do the translation before heading back to the elevator. But, like, how I was I supposed to know that when I found a solvable puzzle I wasn't actually supposed to solve it yet. Hmph.
glassonion recruited him to help try out the nominees) and was like "I have to do this myself, this is awesome", and so I did do it myself, and it was indeed awesome. This is only the second videogame I have ever finished (after It Takes Two, which I was going to review here like a year ago and apparently never did) and the, hm, fifth videogame I have played any of (the others being Mario Kart 8, Unpacking (which I think J and I are close to the end of) and Overcooked 2) (I am not here counting the many, many computer games I have spent many, many weeks or months of my life playing) so this is a review from a position of no genre literacy. But I thought it was very clever and very satisfying and very do-able by me (although I had trouble getting the controller to do what I wanted it to do during the time-dependent "sneaking" parts and for one bit handed it off to J (other J) to do the actual driving while I told him what I was trying to do). Highly recommended if you like codes or puzzles or ever invented a fantasy hieroglyphic language or daydreamed about deciphering one.Some spoilers:
I was curious afterwards whether there was a different ending if I had made a different choice near the end, so I read some walkthroughs and such, and was surprised to find out that some people weren't doing the videocall translation tasks as they went along? Like, it seemed obvious to me that being the translation service/undoing Babel was the whole point of the game. Anyways, I did appreciate the internet for telling me what other ending I could have gotten if I hadn't been going for the good ending.
I also made one funny "mistake", that I had no idea was a mistake - on the warriors level, I found my way up to the bell tower, and knew one of the symbols, and took a look at the other ones and was like "oh yeah that's clearly x, that's probably y, that leaves z", so I went and played the song, and all the warriors rushed off, and I was like "oh I bet I can get through that one door now", which I could, and it was the elevator up to the next level, but I still had half the warrior language untranslated, and J and Q were like "uhhhh" and explained that actually there was like half that level still that I hadn't even seen and I was not supposed to do that. So I had to run around the rest of the level looking at the replays of what would have happened - apparently there was a whole activity where I would have gotten to pick up and put down a box - and do the translation before heading back to the elevator. But, like, how I was I supposed to know that when I found a solvable puzzle I wasn't actually supposed to solve it yet. Hmph.
