**Status.** A bounded evidence check of two shipped language-decipherment games against the team's language-play proposals. Sources are developer statements in official material and interviews; secondary summaries did not fill gaps. Nothing here shows that our version will be fun, readable or long enough. Three kinds of claim are kept apart: an implemented mechanic the developer describes, a stated intention, and empirical evidence from players. Neither game's sources supplied the third beyond developer impressions.

Sources: [inkle's official page](https://www.inklestudios.com/heavensvault/); [Game Developer interview, 17 April 2019](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/how-inkle-developed-its-own-ancient-language-for-i-heaven-s-vault-i-) (Jon Ingold, Joseph Humfrey); [MCV/DEVELOP interview, 16 April 2019](https://mcvuk.com/development-news/heavens-vault-how-inkle-wrote-its-own-herstory/) (Ingold, Humfrey); [TheSixthAxis interview, 27 April 2018](https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2018/04/27/interview-talking-with-inkles-about-deciphering-ancient-language-in-heavens-vault/) (Ingold); [PCWorld preview, 18 April 2018](https://www.pcworld.com/article/401842/heavens-vault-preview-inkle.html) (one Ingold quote, otherwise a journalist's account).

**Implemented, as the developers describe it.** Inscriptions are broken into words and the player selects, for each word, from a small set of English candidates the player character offers; words are built from smaller "atoms", so related symbols hint at connections already made (Game Developer; inkle page). The game never says whether a choice is right: "What we don't tell you is if you're right" (Ingold, MCV). A guess is fed back into the story and into later translations, and a wrong idea "can feed into the narrative" (Ingold, MCV). There is no fail state; the design "encourages correct interpretations or eliminates options" as a player drifts (Game Developer paraphrase). Inscriptions are generated to match each player's dictionary progress and location (Game Developer). Ingold expects players to be confident about roughly a third of the language by the end (TheSixthAxis). The player still decides which candidate to commit, whether to trust an earlier guess when a word recurs, and what a place therefore is; the companion's hinting role is not described in these sources.

**Stated intention.** To feel like translating rather than to model a language: the "Guitar Hero of linguistics" (Humfrey, Game Developer); ownership through uncertainty (Ingold, TheSixthAxis).

**Empirical evidence.** Only a developer impression that guesses are "usually pretty good" (MCV paraphrase). No published player data.

**Transfer limit.** The uncertainty works because a story absorbs any guess at no cost and without a clock. In Hold The Horde a reading is spent under oxygen and horde pressure and can fail physically, and a fixed station cannot generate inscriptions to fit progress; placed redundancy must do what inkle's generation does.

Sources: [Game Developer interview, 29 February 2024](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/immersing-players-in-the-culture-of-a-people-with-language-puzzler-chants-of-sennaar) (Julien Moya); [developer store description](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1931770/Chants_of_Sennaar/); [Rundisc's page](https://rundisc.io/chants-of-sennaar/). Two further interviews ([80.lv](https://80.lv/articles/postmortem-chants-of-sennaar-s-story-road-to-success), [Pocket Tactics](https://www.pockettactics.com/chants-of-sennaar/interview)) contained no mechanic detail.

**Implemented, as the developer describes it.** A redundancy rule: "every word you encounter in the game must be seen at least twice in two different situations" (Moya, Game Developer). Players are not expected to understand a word at once; they "jot down a few hypotheses and keep exploring" in a notebook (Moya; store text: "note each symbol, keep track of your surroundings"). Two systems are named but not explained in the reachable sources: an "Obra Dinn-inspired validation system" and "automatic translation of complete sentences" (Moya, Game Developer). The widely reported picture-page batch confirmation could not be verified from a developer source within the cap and is treated as unverified. Context comes from people speaking and acting.

**Stated intention.** "The feeling of the traveler who explores countries where he or she doesn't speak the language" and understands "through cultural immersion and practice"; "confronting the player with seemingly impossible challenges while discreetly giving them all the tools and clues they need" (Moya, Game Developer).

**Empirical evidence.** None in the sources; the systems emerged from development trial and error, not reported player data.

**Transfer limit.** Sennaar's context is living speakers in safe spaces. Our languages have no speakers, and observation costs oxygen. A batch-validation system also grants a certainty our proposals deliberately withhold; adopting one is an explicit change of stance, not a detail.

**"Every inference testable", "costs little", "cannot be solved by dialogue".** Heaven's Vault is a working design in which inferences are not testable at all; the story absorbs them. Testability is a preference that presumes a machine response for every sign; no source supports it as a requirement. "Costs little" is contradicted by the mechanic taking inkle "about a year and a half" (Ingold, MCV) and Rundisc "extensive trial-and-error": the interface and consistency are the cost, not the instances.

**"Any two comparable instances plus one that breaks the reading will do."** Sennaar's stated safeguard is a per-word rule of at least two situations, and Heaven's Vault compensates for misses by generation. Neither shows that two-plus-one guarantees recovery, which still depends on the player noticing the exception. Context-dependent signs also still yield reusable rules: inkle's atoms are precisely reusable context, so an indexical language does not exclude a lookup.

**"A hint, match or confirmed gloss removes interpretation."** Heaven's Vault hands the player candidate words for every inscription and still leaves choice and consequence; Sennaar's automatic sentence translation is assistance the developer describes as part of the puzzle, not its removal. Help does not by itself dissolve interpretation, and required help is a gate only where a policy makes it one.

One inherited example should be dropped: a ledger tally matching the player's death count assumes a count-based mechanism no direction has adopted.

Both shipped designs give the player something firmer than open inference: candidates to choose among, or validation once enough is consistent. Both survive missed clues by redundancy or generation. In a fixed station priced in oxygen, the transferable safeguard is a stated per-sign redundancy rule, and the paused journal can present a sign's own recorded instances side by side without confirming a meaning. The choice the sources cannot make for us: withhold confirmation entirely and let readings feed consequences, or confirm in batches once enough is consistent. The first fits discovery first and personal ownership; the second gives certainty and pacing. Neither source shows which holds up when reading is done under threat.