🔗 Share this article

Having experienced more than 200 recent games this year, It's time to closing the book on 2025. My annual roundup is out in the world, and I am at peace with the ultimate rankings, accepting that a host of excellent games probably slipped through the cracks. Now, there's nothing for me to do except relax, unplug a little, and possibly go for a nice walk in the— oh no, stumbled upon a amazing experience. So much for my plans!

A Premature Front-Runner Appears

During my laid-back sessions, usually reserved for a handful of quirky titles, I've come across what could be my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that deconstructs a conventional labyrinth explorer into a probability-fueled game of significant risk risk and reward. Take this as an early adopter's heads-up: If you relish in knowing about a game before it's cool, test out Sol Cesto so you can punch a hole in your indie credit card.

A Calculated Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's different from everything I'm familiar with. The premise is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, going down level by level to find the sun, which has gone missing from this mythical realm. In practice, this creates some familiar roguelike structure. Choose an adventurer who has attributes and skills, defeat enemies on every stage of enemies, acquire some stat improvements (in the form of teeth), and vanquish a few area guardians. Straightforward, right!

The Unique Core Mechanic

The way you truly navigate a chamber, though. Whenever you start another stage, you're shown a 4x4 grid of boxes. Every tile either contains a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To explore a room, you just select on one of the horizontal lines, but which square you end up on is up to chance.

You could encounter a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You initially will have a 25% chance of landing on a specific tile in a row.

After that, the chances are recalculated. So do you go for it, or do you click on a different row first and try to make more cautious selections early? Herein lies the tension between chance and safety on display in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating when you acquire a feel for it.

Shaping the Odds

The procedural hook is that your probabilities can be influenced during an attempt by gathering teeth that modify the types of squares you're more attracted to. To illustrate, you might get a perk that will reduce the probability of hitting a trap, but will also decrease the odds of finding a treasure chest too.

• Crafting a loadout is about tweaking the numbers optimally to have a improved likelihood at selecting the optimal square.
• During one attempt, I put all my power boosts toward brute force and chose every teeth possible that would improve my probability of being drawn to monsters aligned with that strength.
• In another run, I developed my adventurer around loot caches and coupled it with a perk that would debuff nearby foes whenever I claimed a reward.

The customization choices are somewhat constrained, but they are sufficient to engage with to let you manipulate probabilities to your preference.

A Constant Tension

Naturally, it remains a game of chance. You constantly face the possibility that you have a likely outcome to hit the preferred space but wind up hitting a monster that would deplete your last bit of health. Every move is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you work through a stage and decide when to keep clicking or when to move on to the following level rather than risking it all.

Consumables including destructive ordnance assist in minimizing the chance, similar to some hero powers. One hero's signature move, activated once making four moves, lets gamers to select a column instead of a row on a turn. Should you use this strategically, you can save that move for the right moment to sidestep a dangerous choice. There's a shocking amount of nuance in the basic action of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is currently in early access, and it has a final update scheduled before the complete edition is released. A new character and a additional end-level foe are scheduled to arrive before the conclusion of January. The 1.0 release may not be long after, but the creators haven't announced a concrete launch day yet.

A Concluding Thought

No matter when its 1.0 launch occurs, you might want to put Sol Cesto in your sights. I've been completely engrossed with it, uncovering each of little secrets and saving my accumulated currency every session to reveal a continuous trickle of persistent upgrades, including new characters and items available for acquisition mid-attempt. To this day, I have not reached the bottom, and I get the feeling I'll still be pursuing that objective when 1.0 finally hits. Sign me up for the long haul.