The archive · Games & Play · Product decision · 2023
Chants of Sennaar (2023): Rundisc makes deciphering unknown languages the entire game
A puzzle adventure where the core mechanic is translation: players deduce glyph meanings from context and learn five invented languages to reunite the tower.
Rundisc
What it had to solve
Rundisc's first game, Varion, sold poorly, and the two-person studio knew it could not compete on production value. After months of pre-production on a classic adventure, they pivoted mid-design: the whole game would revolve around translating unknown languages.
How it works
Chants of Sennaar, released September 5, 2023, is a puzzle adventure whose entire premise is translation: the player is a traveler in a Tower of Babel-inspired world where five peoples no longer understand each other, and the game's puzzles are those languages themselves.
The idea emerged mid-development. Rundisc — Julien Moya and Thomas Panuel, two self-taught French developers — had been building a classic adventure game when they decided to make deciphering the core of the experience. The languages were treated as puzzle elements, not linguistics: five invented tongues whose scripts mix Latin, Phoenician, cuneiform, Arabic Kufic and Devanagari inspirations, each designed for the needs of the game.
Players infer meaning from context — matching glyphs on doors to open and close, overhearing dialogue, reading signs — and log every deduction in an illustrated journal that becomes their dictionary. There is no translator tool; the learning is the gameplay, and solutions compound across languages as the traveler turns into the tower's interpreter.
The bet paid off: the game shipped with a free demo on all platforms, drew near-unanimous critical praise, and sold far beyond the studio's projections, with word of mouth driving growth month after month. GamesIndustry.biz called it one of the most original games of the year, and Rundisc's own postmortem credits its positioning — an idea only this game could claim — as the reason it broke through.
Why it lands
- Learning is the mechanic: because players deduce meaning from context, the game reproduces the thrill of arriving in a country whose language you don't speak.
- Languages built as puzzle elements, not academic reconstructions, let five scripts gate progression and reward knowledge earned on earlier floors.
- The illustrated journal turns the player's memory into a tangible tool, so partial understanding feels like progress rather than failure.
- Positioning came first: with a tiny team and no budget for graphical spectacle, the studio bet everything on an original idea no competitor could copy.
What it did
Released September 5, 2023 with a free demo on every platform, the game drew near-unanimous critical praise, sales grew month after month, and results far exceeded the studio's projections — a word-of-mouth breakout for a team of two.
What you can take
A genuinely original mechanic beats production value: making the player's own learning the puzzle gave a two-person studio a hook no big team could copy, and constraints became style.
Since then
Chants of Sennaar became a showcase for how a two-person studio can break through: it sold far beyond projections, funded Rundisc's future projects, and was repeatedly named one of the year's best and most original indies. The studio credited its reach to the free demo, word of mouth and a clear positioning, and the game's success made it a reference point for turning a niche mechanic — language learning — into mass-market appeal.
Sources
- Finding power in language with Chants of Sennaar
- Postmortem: Chants of Sennaar's Story & Road to Success
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