🔗 Share this article

Following my time with more than 200 fresh titles this year, I am officially closing the book on 2025. My best-of compilation is published, and I feel content with the final results, despite being aware numerous excellent games probably slipped by the wayside. Currently, my only nothing for me to do but sit back, disconnect briefly, and perhaps take a pleasant stroll in the— ah crap, discovered one more amazing experience. There go my intentions!

A Premature Front-Runner Appears

With my off-hours play, typically earmarked for a handful of quirky titles, I've discovered potentially my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that reimagines a classic labyrinth explorer into a probability-fueled game of major consequence risk and reward. View this an early adopter's heads-up: If you take pride being aware of a game before it's popular, give Sol Cesto a try so you can punch a hole in your gaming budget.

A Strategic Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's different from everything I'm familiar with. The setup is that you need to explore a dungeon, descending floor after floor in search of the sun, which has vanished from its world. Mechanically, that makes for some recognizable genre framework. Select a character possessing unique attributes and skills, clear floor after floor of enemies, pick up some stat improvements (which are teeth), and overcome a few biome bosses. Simple enough!

The Novel Core Mechanic

The way you truly navigate a area, however. Every time you enter a new floor, you're shown a 4x4 grid of boxes. Every tile features a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To explore a room, you just select on one of the horizontal lines, but which square you end up on is a matter of probability.

You might see a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You begin with a one-in-four probability of landing on a specific tile in a row.

After that, the chances are recalculated. The question becomes: Do you go for it, or do you opt on a alternative option first and try to make more cautious selections early? Herein lies the tension between chance and safety at play in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating once you get a feel for it.

Shaping the Odds

The procedural hook is that your odds can be manipulated through a run by gathering teeth that alter which objects you're drawn toward. For example, you could acquire a perk that will reduce the probability of hitting a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of landing on a treasure chest too.

• Developing a strategy is about manipulating math as best you can to have a higher chance at selecting the optimal square.
• On a particular session, I focused my stat upgrades toward brute force and chose every teeth I could 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 coupled it with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters each time I secured loot.

The customization choices are somewhat constrained, but there's enough to work with to let you manipulate probabilities according to your strategy.

An Ever-Present Tension

Unsurprisingly, it's still a game of chance. There remains the possibility that you have a likely outcome to land on the square you want but wind up hitting on an enemy that would deplete your remaining life. Each click is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you navigate a level and determine if to continue selecting or to proceed to the next floor instead of risking it all.

Items like destructive ordnance help cut down the chance, similar to some character abilities. An adventurer's signature move, activated once clearing four squares, lets gamers to click on a column instead of a horizontal row on a turn. By employing this strategically, you can save that move for the right moment to circumvent a perilous selection. You'll find an astonishing level of strategy in the simple act of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is remaining in development, and it has at least one more update to go before the complete edition is released. A new character 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 creators haven't committed to a concrete launch day yet.

A Final Endorsement

Regardless of when its 1.0 launch occurs, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your radar. I've been thoroughly captivated with it, discovering its small details and storing my run rewards in each run to unlock a steady stream of persistent upgrades, such as additional heroes and items purchasable while playing. To this day, I have not completed the dungeon, and I suspect I'll continue pursuing that objective when 1.0 finally hits. Count me in for the complete journey.