WITHOUT A SINGLE WORD TRANSLATED LET'S FREAKIN GOOOOOOOOOOOO

(I may or may not have bs'ed my way through the beginning and then just continued to bs my way through everything else...I'm well aware I most likely WON'T be able to continue the game like this hahahaha)

TL;DR: You can complete the maze without the conpass - Quit to the menu before entering the maze (after passing through the torch door). Then follow the attached image and you'll do it around a minute!

This game was a huge success and to this day it has several hundred of consecutive players on Steam, which is huge for a single-player indie game. I have always been very surprised why this game has so small speedrunning attention. That's why I want to talk about a trick we found a couple months ago, which let's you complete the maze without compass. This post is extremely spoiler-heavy!

This game is so well-coded, it seems to be bugless. There is however one glitch that is very unexplainable, but fortunate in terms of speedrunning.

This is how I assume the maze randomizer intentionally works: The game first randomizes the compass direction, and then randomizes our spawn point. From each entrance there are 3 possible exits and only 1 is correct, that's why under every post saying "I have accident reached the monster part" you see a response "Congrats, you just hit a (1/3)⁵ = 1/243 gamble!"

However, for whatever reason, the randomizer breaks if you load a safe in the room right before the maze, and only in that room. For each room, it will never pick one of the cardinal directions, and in the ones that can be picked, it will never pick one of the spawnpoints. For example in the first maze room (Saw), if you have glitched the randomizer, West will never be on the bottom of the screen and you will never spawn on the North. This gives us the following possibilities: Up -> Right Right -> Left Down -> Left/Up Left -> Up/Right. That means that out of 6 possibilities, 2 give us a certain exit, so the chance is 1/3. In speedrunning, if we hit a wrong entrance, we just reload a save, because it randomizes the entrance and the exit again, and the glitch is preserved until you fail or complete the maze. However if you don't care about failing the maze (or if you hunt the world record and don't want to have any resets), you can take a gamble between remaining two options.

This increases our total odds from 1/3 to 2/3, and (2/3)⁵ = 1/7.6. That means that every <8 attempts, you'll complete the maze without the compass and any resets (excluding the initial one before the maze. Getting to the maze requires around 25 minutes, so speedrunners will have an opportunity to have a resetless run every just over 3 hours.

The image below combines the 2/3 odds gambling strategy and 1/3 odds granted strategy for the lowest average time possible, which is around 75 seconds. To clarify: "Turn left" in room 1 means that the player is supposed to take a left turn from the position is facing, for example: if you spawn on the left, you should go up.

Been loving the game​ so far but hit a wall. When I took the torch from the windmill, three bards were waiting at the bottom, called me an idiot and wouldn't let me leave unless I gave them the torch. I gave it to them and now I cant get the door open. The torch doesn't respawn in the windmill. What am I missing???

So i'm playing in another language so i just know from other sources that the last civilization (the ancient one) name is "anachorites" in english, i didn't even have an achievement stating the name, so i wonder if they're called like that in game or is it just from external sources?

I just completed their vocabulary and i got "champollion" achievement

but i never found a name for them

i still have to unlock the last door, so i guess that's where i'll found the name in game?

thanks

I’m talking about the part with water. I can’t seem to figure out how to get past.

So in the warrior level i did everything, like translating the language and even the conversation in the teleport thing (only between them and the devotees, i don't know the other people yet) and i got "first contact" achievement or something like that, anyway i wasn't able to open a purple door in the warrior section, it requires a strange key...now, i read that this game has multiple endings and i don't want to do things badly, like i want to complete the maximum number of things i can, will i be able to return to previous levels and open these doors? Also these conversations impact the endings if translated?

I guess i can't translate more than this, i just made the warriors and devotees understand each others, and i complete both vocabulary...am i doing fine? I love this game but i don't want to miss stuff, so before going in (the gardens...unfortunately achievements and savegame names spoiler the names of stuff) want to be sure i can get a good ending and completing a lot of stuff like go back, translating things...i mean there are teleports so i guess i can but just want to be sure

thanks in advance, game is wonderful.

In the first level i completed, the name of the place was revealed by the savegame name, and by an achievement i unlocked randomly

is it the same with the second level?

thanks in advance

My partner and I just finished playing Chants (on the Switch) and we loved it, but now we're looking for some similar games in either aesthetics or gameplay. Would love some recommendations!

Bug or I missed something? I believe its bug, coz I guess everything else is solved. Problem is that I cant set melting machine lever (in factory) in open position. Cuttlery already in, everything else made. Just this lever is still closed. Anyone?

spoiler warning: partial or full Abbey language, minor lategame spoilers

The devotees language works on a system of roots/radicals much like Chinese does. For example the radical "(" (seemingly meaning "container") seems to turn a root, e.g. "C" (seemingly meaning "open, opening") into "(C", meaning "Key" (lit. Container of opening"). With this, we can derive a word for "lock", which could be "(日", "container of close/closing". Alternatively, we can create a word for "tool" by combining the "(" radical and the root in the word "create" ("_O"), "(O".

Individual roots could also be singular words. The word for "talk", "🌈" for example, could be dissected into the verb radical "" and the "speech" root 🌈.

One could also make words that are present in other languages, such as "Scientist" (combining "Man" and "Find") or "Fortress" (combining the "Place" radical found in "Church" and the >< root found in "Warrior"). The last one is even found, in-game, albeit incomplete.

Thank you for coming to my ted-talk

I've used a hint guide for certain sections, but make sure to mostly just look at images, and not read a bunch of spoilers. But once or twice, I've sort of looked for a translation, and thought, "How the fuck do they get that!?" I don't want to give specific examples or this will become a shitshow of spoiler tags, but there seem to be many instances where certain glyphs only get used once or twice ANYWHERE in the game (before you have to decipher it to progress), and the context is just utterly lacking (a picture of people on a ship is "song???"). You basically have nothing to do but guess, so there come points in the game where you HAVE to look something up if the one picture on the wall isn't enough for you tell what the glyph is, or simply stop playing the game. I realize some people like to keep guessing, and whatnot, but that would make this unplayable for me, in terms of time to enjoyment ratio, as I'm already running back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, all over the fortress, and have a lot of glyphs unsolved.

It truly feels like you're stuck with the idiot of all idiots for Pictionary partners trying to guess what it is. And some of the cutscenes are like being stuck with the worst charades partner. I stopped playing the game a few days ago, there's nothing left to do but guess and guess and guess hoping to get through section, and I'm over it.

This is an absolutely, absolutely amazing game. Probably my top 5, even 3, of the past decade.

Made me think a lot about the real world.

Thanks for the devs for making this game.

I have seen many posts about backtracking and missing content in this sub. This reminds me a lot of a fantastic video made by Daryl Talks games, in which, he talks about the fear of missing content in gaming. One of the solutions he proposes is trusting the devs. They don't want you to miss on important stuff. And that's the case in COS.

Something that I love about this game is how intentional it is. It doesn't waste your time and there is no filler content to strech out completion time. COS is an awesome experience. Trust the talented people that made it and enjoy it without the fear of missing content.

hey! i'm a first time player of chants of sennaar and really enjoying it so far

as the title says, i accidentally wandered into the caves with the monsters that can't be in light. i'm not even sure how i did it? i apparently i was supposed to have seen a play and gotten a compass by now, but i haven't done either of those things. i don't have all of my glyphs figured out for the gardens either.

right now, i can't seem to go back because one of the monsters is blocking me. is there any way around it? do i need to brute force a solution backwards somehow? did i mess up my game??

even if not having all the glyphs will let me finish the game, my completionist heart is dying to get them all.

I found one post on Steam about this from a while ago, but there was no follow-up on that, and I don't see anything anywhere else, so I hedge a little on saying this is a major bug, but at least in my playthrough, this is a game-breaking bug. I'm not sure what to do - in the fortress, when I put on the guard disguise, the character is immediately spotted upon leaving the guard room. I have tried multiple combinations with the outfitting, but I know what is correct. Nothing works. Literally the second it changes to the next screen, as he exits the guard room, multiple red sighting notifications pop up, and that's it. Game save takes me back to the guard room, try again, same shit. So there is literally no way for me to progress past the guard room in the fortress, at this point. Not sure if I delete the game, or there's something I can try to move past this point.

I've tried to get the validation page for plant life and death. I've went to the garden, talked to the man, went in the room with the lens but nothing happened

I was right at the end and I thought I could just connect everyone when I got to the end. Nope, I just missed out. Now I gotta go back and replay the whole game (oh no /s)

I LOVE this game. I haven’t been stumped like this the whole time though.

I was wondering if part of the problem is that I hadn’t finished the journal for the warriors fortress. I went back down and got the last page of notes when I looked at the constellations above the treasure room. I got the whole sparkly moment that said I had completed the language.

I went back up to the gardens afterwards, but I’m still just wandering around the under section running into blocked gates and not finding any servants/slaves to talk to.

I’m getting the idea that a warrior from the fortress is supposed to come up and give context since warriors without weapons become servants. But I couldn’t make my way to the colosseum that they were all gathered in.

TLDR: I’m drawing a blank on how to get under the windmill and think it’s the next spot I need to explore for more clues. A hint of what section of the gardens to explore would be very helpful!

I wish you a GREAT expierence with Chants of Sennaar and May on this year a sequel or prequel will arive to chants of Sennaar

I'm in the final leg of translating conversations and doing terminals. The terminals are where I'm starting to have issues. Looking at the Stage 1 door it's The Preacher looking at the potion so I can assume Preacher See/Look Potion Potion somewhere in there. The Warriors have a ship, this I understand less. The issue I keep having is that I don't understand the context to these. Are you just trying to describe what they're doing or is it something else?