256
Chants of Sennaar, a puzzle game where you decipher an alien language (Demo available)
(store.steampowered.com)
I don't know if this is a good community to post to, but it's a cool game and i want to share it somewhere.
I think i heard about this game in a conlang group. I recently played the demo, and it was amazing. The game's idea is pretty novel too. You decipher a logographic language based on context and clues, and you have to manually decipher the words meaning, too; so you could translate it wrong. in the "ME ME TOWER GO PRAISE" box, i'm not sure if the PRAISE hieroglyph is actually correct. I love linguistics, and to see a game made around it is awesome.
If you are open to try a more adventure oriented spin on this, then try Tunic. Where the main game mechanic is translating the game's manual by learning the language of the world.
I would argue that that's the optional game mechanic.
The main game mechanic is that it's a Zelda-like hack and slash (with some more souls-like bosses). The secondary game mechanic is its secret puzzle system and then finally if you get through all that, there's still this language you can decipher to solve the very last puzzle.
I didn't try to figure out the language in this game (not smart enough for that), but exploring, finding hidden areas, and secrets was so satisfying I need another game like this too. I love when puzzles are knowledge-gated rather than item- or progress-gated.
If you're looking for that dopamine hit for finding hidden paths/areas, then check out pretty much any From Software game.
I loved the gameplay and puzzles for the most part (and the adorable main char) but I don’t have enough brain juice to figure out the language D: