Abolish Verticality 📕 | The Art of Chants of Sennaar

This month I'd like to highlight the excellent Chants of Sennaar, a real masterpiece from small French indie studio rundisc_. In this puzzle game, we explore the Tower of Babel and learn its different languages in order to recreate lost links between now distant peoples. It's a game in which the notion of humility runs through all artistic aspects, a humility that somewhat contradicts the tower's verticality, its hierarchy and its taste for emphasis. But all of Babel's inhabitants aren't that happy, and satisfaction conceals many humiliations.

🎤 This video is also available in French (published on January 21, 2024) ▶️    • Abolir La Verticalité 📕 | L'Art de Chants ...  

🎞 All my "one-shot" analyses ▶️    • ONE-SHOTS 🎯 (EN)  

#ChantsOfSennaar, #videogameisart

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📔 I NEED A PLAN!

00:00:00 Introduction
00:02:46 1 · Humility | Playable character || Presentation
00:13:22 Playable character || Quest
00:15:21 Playable character || Physical and moral stance
00:17:41 Playable character || Silence
00:18:42 Humility | Cleverly "tame" the tower
00:21:11 Humility | Music
00:27:44 Humility | Development: the force of suggestion
00:29:20 Emotions
00:35:58 Concepts and purity
00:38:58 2 · Code/Decode | Emphasis || Attitudes
00:40:19 Emphasis || Architecture
00:41:58 Emphasis || Music: beyond the codes
00:50:01 Code/Decode | Hierarchy || Verticality
00:53:40 Hierarchy || A welcome disorder: the child
00:55:12 Hierarchy || Music
01:02:00 Code/Decode | Bitter satisfaction and wish for freedom: the bards
01:05:30 The bards || Gardens of Plenty
01:12:14 The bards || Envers
01:16:29 3 · Connect | A common past?
01:19:15 Music: a dialogue on several scales
01:30:57 Conclusion
01:32:14 Credits ❣️ Thanks for watching!

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🎥 OTHER LINKS/CREDITS

▶️ For this video I used the following interviews (but you can still watch/read them, I only used a small part of the information):
⏩ Julien Moya and Thomas Panuel's interview in "Rencontre en Terre Indé" ("A Meeting in Indie Territory"), presented by At0mium and mistermv :    • GODOT & LA CRÉATION DE CHANTS OF SENNAAR (...  
⏩ The interview Thomas Brunet did for peterline6's VGM newsletter, now available for free on his patreon :   / thomas-brunet-of-95728094  
⏩ The interview Thomas Brunet and Julien Moya did for JVFrance : https://www.jvfrance.com/interview-ch...

▶️ Other articles about Chants of Sennaar (I didn't read them but I might as well add them here - they're in French though and only available to subscribers):
⏩ An article for canardpc about the creation of imaginary languages in several video games (including Tunic and Heaven's Vault - subs only) : https://www.canardpc.com/jeu-video/do...
⏩ An interview with Thomas Brunet and Roman Cabezos for "Gammes Kultes", Gamekult's audio/vgm column (subs only) : https://www.gamekult.com/actualite/ch...

▶️ A few screenshots in the video come from one of the trailers:    • Chants of Sennaar - Gameplay Overview Trai...  

▶️ The Starfield screenshots come from Andy Kelly's X account:   / 1701199929031430325  

▶️ I used some footage from:
⏩ Recording of Chants of Sennaar's OST at the Studio du Bassin :    • Rencontre avec -  @ThomasBrunetMusic  #Cha...  
⏩ The Art of Fugue by the Netherlands Bach Society :    • Bach - The Art of Fugue BWV 1080 - Sato | ...  

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💙 SOCIAL MEDIA

I'm on X and Bluesky, mostly posting updates about the upcoming videos (how fun!):
  / untamed_fox_  
https://bsky.app/profile/untamedfox.b...

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🖋 ATTRIBUTIONS

▶️ The icon used for my channel logo is made by Smashicons (https://www.flaticon.com/authors/smas...) from Flaticon (https://www.flaticon.com)