🔗 Share this article

Following my time with well over 200 fresh titles this year, I am officially wrapping things up on 2025. My year-end list is out in the world, and I feel content with the concluding selections, even knowing a host of excellent games probably slipped under the radar. At this point, it's plan is to other than unwind, take a short break, and maybe enjoy a pleasant stroll in the— oh no, stumbled upon a great game. There go my intentions!

A Premature Contender Emerges

In my more off-hours play, often set aside for a few oddball curiosities, I've discovered what could be my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that reimagines a classic labyrinth explorer into a chance-driven game of major consequence risk and reward. Consider this an early adopter's heads-up: If you relish being aware of a game before it's cool, sample Sol Cesto so you can burn a spot in your indie credit card.

A Tactical Dungeon-Crawling Innovation

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's a departure from all I've ever played. The premise is that you must venture into a dungeon, descending floor after floor on a quest for the sun, which has disappeared from its world. Mechanically, that makes for some standard crawl progression. Choose an adventurer possessing unique attributes and skills, defeat enemies on every stage of enemies, pick up some passive buffs (represented as teeth), and overcome a few area guardians. Easy to grasp!

The Unique Central System

How you actually clear a area, however. Every time you begin a fresh level, you're shown a sixteen-square board of boxes. Each square holds a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To explore a room, you just select on one of the horizontal lines, but the specific tile you land in is up to chance.

You could encounter a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You start with a one-in-four probability of hitting a particular space in a row.

Subsequently, your odds shift. The question becomes: Do you press your luck, or do you click on a alternative option first and aim for safer moves early? Herein lies the push-your-luck gameplay on display in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing when you acquire a feel for it.

Shaping the Odds

The roguelike twist is that your probabilities can be influenced over the course of a session by picking up teeth that change what things you're more attracted to. As an instance, you could acquire a perk that will reduce the probability of landing on a trap, but will also decrease the odds of landing on a reward too.

• Creating a build is about influencing the statistics to the utmost to have a better shot at landing where you want.
• During one attempt, I focused my power boosts toward brute force and chose every teeth possible that would improve my probability of being drawn to monsters of that variety.
• In another run, I built my character around reward boxes and coupled it with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies each time I secured loot.

The build options are limited, but there's enough to engage with to enable you to influence probabilities according to your strategy.

A Persistent Risk

Naturally, it's still a game of chance. There's always the risk that you have an 80% chance to land on the desired tile but end up landing on an enemy that would deplete your last bit of health. Every move is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you work through a stage and choose whether to keep clicking or to proceed to the subsequent stage instead of pushing your luck.

Items like explosive devices aid in reducing the chance, as do some special skills. An adventurer's signature move, powered up by selecting four tiles, allows players to click on a vertical column rather than a row for that move. Should you use your cards right, you can save that move for an optimal time to avoid a risky decision. You'll find an astonishing amount of nuance in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is currently in its preview phase, and it has another update scheduled before the final game is unleashed. An additional hero and a fresh guardian are expected to drop by the end of January. The 1.0 release likely won't be much later, but the studio haven't announced a specific release window yet.

A Final Endorsement

No matter when its 1.0 launch occurs, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your radar. I have been thoroughly captivated with it, uncovering each of small details and storing my run rewards per attempt to unlock a steady stream of meta progression rewards, featuring additional heroes and items available for acquisition during a run. I still haven't reached the bottom, and I get the feeling I'll continue attempting that goal when the official release drops. Count me in for the long haul.