🔗 Share this article

After playing more than 200 recent games this year, I am officially turning the page on 2025. My best-of compilation is out in the world, and I feel content with the concluding selections, despite being aware plenty of fantastic releases probably slipped through the cracks. Currently, my only plan is to other than unwind, unplug a little, and possibly go for a nice walk in the— ah crap, found another brilliant title. And just like that, goodbye to my peaceful respite!

An Early Contender Emerges

With my laid-back sessions, often set aside for a few oddball curiosities, I've come across potentially my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that deconstructs a classic labyrinth explorer into a probability-fueled game of significant risk peril and prize. Take this as a hipster's insider tip: If you enjoy discovering a game before it hits the mainstream, test out Sol Cesto so you can make a dent in your gaming budget.

A Strategic Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's unlike anything I've previously experienced. The premise is that you must venture into a dungeon, going down level by level in search of the sun, which has vanished from this mythical realm. When you play, that makes for some standard crawl progression. Choose an adventurer who has attributes and skills, defeat enemies on every stage of monsters, collect some stat improvements (in the form of teeth), and vanquish a few area guardians. Simple enough!

The Distinctive Central System

The method by which you effectively complete a dungeon room, though. Each instance you start another stage, the game presents a 4x4 grid of boxes. Each square features a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To explore a room, you just select on one of the four rows, but which square you select is a matter of probability.

You may face a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You initially will have a 25% chance of hitting any given square in a row.

Subsequently, your odds shift. The question becomes: Do you press your luck, or do you click on a safer line first and try to make less risky choices early? This is the push-your-luck gameplay in action in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing when you acquire its rhythm.

Influencing Chance

The procedural hook is that your odds can be manipulated during an attempt by gathering teeth that modify the types of squares you're drawn toward. To illustrate, you may obtain a perk that will reduce the probability of hitting a trap, but will also decrease the odds of finding a treasure chest too.

• Developing a strategy is about influencing the statistics optimally to have a better shot at getting your desired outcome.
• During one attempt, I focused my stat upgrades toward brute force and selected all the teeth possible that would improve my probability of being drawn to monsters with that damage type.
• On a different attempt, I built my character around loot caches and paired that with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies whenever I opened a chest.

The build options are somewhat constrained, but it provides ample to engage with to enable you to influence the odds the way you want.

A Constant Gamble

Unsurprisingly, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There remains the risk that you have a likely outcome to land on the square you want but wind up hitting a monster that would eliminate your last bit of health. All selections is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you clear a floor out and choose whether to continue selecting or to advance to the subsequent stage rather than testing fate.

Tools such as explosive devices assist in minimizing the chance, as do some hero powers. One hero's special power, charged after selecting four tiles, allows players to select a vertical line rather than a horizontal line during that action. By employing this strategically, you can reserve that option for a crucial point to avoid a risky decision. You'll find an astonishing level of strategy in the basic action of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is remaining in early access, and it has another update planned until the final game is released. An additional hero and a new boss are scheduled to arrive sometime in January. The full launch may not be far behind, but the creators haven't announced a specific release window yet.

A Concluding Recommendation

Whenever the complete game arrives, you should consider put Sol Cesto on your radar. I have been thoroughly captivated with it, uncovering each of small details and banking my earned gold in each run to reveal a continuous trickle of permanent unlocks, including fresh adventurers and items I can buy while playing. To this day, I have not reached the bottom, and I get the feeling I will remain pursuing that objective when the full version launches. Sign me up for the entire experience.