Great atmosphere and low-poly visuals, and the controls that make or break its gameplay loops feel great to control. Overall it’s a perfectly solid game that I’d recommend, and I thought both of its endings were neat, but I also felt a little like “that’s it?” as I realized its full extent. The compulsive multipart harvest-and-upgrade loops, the number of separate islands, and the expansive list of creatively imagined fish all give the impression that it’s a bigger game than it is. I’m fine with it not being any bigger, but I wish it was okay cutting some of the upgrade loop stuff that retroactively feels like filler, building up needlessly for content that’s not there.

The deduction of icons feels perfectly balanced between not being too spelled out and not being too vague, and I love how each distinct culture is efficiently evoked through their language. Which concepts are core to their culture and common enough that you learn them first? How does their language frame concepts they share with other cultures (e.g. devotees vs impure ones)? Which concepts are so inessential that their language seems to omit them entirely?

Beyond the slow accumulation of understanding, I was impressed by the meta-challenge of forming cultural links, and the eventual ending sequence itself. A lot of similar games feel the need to have a big climactic gameplay sequence to drive home the combined emotion of the story and the full robustness of their puzzle design, but the difference with Chants of Sennarr is that it’s the rare example that actually imagines and executes it well, so I wasn’t distracted with frustration at any point.

Also, what a simple but visually stunning game.

I tried this out at the tail end of its Game Pass availability, thinking I’d try it and be able to drop it once it started feeling chore-like, and then I ended up hooked and buying it elsewhere once it left GP. The escalation of abilities to break down ships feels uniquely powerful, and the matching escalation of hazards and new ship types and variants keeps the process from getting stale. Similarly, figuring out time-saving shortcuts during breakdown routines feels incredibly satisfying, as does the iterative process of determining which cheap parts are more valuable to not salvage.

Other side activities bubble up as well, like pocketing assorted parts to fix up your own ship or decorate your HAB, or the ghost ships infested with troublesome AI nodes. There’s also a slapstick sense of comedy throughout when breakdown goes wrong, turning hasty disasters into laughs along with the encouragement to be more careful next time.

The labor rights story comes on a little strong at first, but that initial vibe ends up being fitting for the outgoing personality of the organizer. By its conclusion, it manages to be a relatively sophisticated sci-Fi dramatization of labor organizing with emotionally engaging stakes. The climactic industrial action is memorable for the story choices it offers and its clever gameplay twists.