Epigraph
I don't want to say too much about this one, but I played it last week and was blown away. Epigraph is an extremely elegant, restrained translation-puzzle game with extraordinarily good "puzzle design" and UI. And the language itself is just a ton of fun to decipher. If you loved the translation gameplay in Heaven's Vault or Chants of Sennar, I can't recommend it enough.
The game consists of a set of completely black statues, tablets, and artifacts which are covered in text from an ancient language. It allows you to note your translation of each word and letter on those artifacts. It gives you two pages of English-language text notes about them. And that's it. There is one test to see if you really can understand the language, and that's the end of the game. Incredible.
The coolest thing about this game is that it supplies you with basically only three sets of clues, right at the beginning of the game... and those are the only clues it supplies you for the entire experience. You get:
- The names of three ancient kings or places which may be mentioned on the artifacts
- The translation of one of the artifacts
- Some words from a completely different, though related, language from a neighboring culture
The clues are extremely restrained, careful, and dense with meaning. I loved the experience of slowly discovering how much I was able to conclude from this starting information.
Anyway, I loved it. I know a lot of my friends love translation puzzle games so I think many of you would adore this game.