Darmok is a pretty famous Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. In the episode, Picard is captured then trapped on a planet with an alien captain who speaks a metaphorical language. They must learn to communicate with each other before a deadly beast overwhelms them.

This isn’t quite as strange as you might think. There are records from civilizations that didn’t have a formal written language. Darius the Great (500 BC) was once given a strange box with several objects by the Scythian army encamped against him. They had no formal writing language; so they had to interpret the message.