🔗 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 live, and I'm satisfied with the concluding selections, accepting that a host of stellar titles likely fell by the wayside. Now, there's job is to other than unwind, take a short break, and possibly go for a nice walk in the— ah crap, found another great game. There go my plans!

An Early Front-Runner Appears

In my more casual gaming time, typically earmarked for a selection of unusual games, I've come across potentially my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual roguelike for Windows PC that deconstructs a conventional dungeon crawler into a luck-based game of significant risk danger and payoff. Consider this a hipster's insider tip: If you take pride discovering a game before it's cool, sample Sol Cesto so you can burn a spot in your wallet for unique titles.

A Calculated Dungeon-Crawling Innovation

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's different from everything I'm familiar with. The setup is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper on a quest for the sun, which has gone missing from this mythical realm. Mechanically, this results in some familiar roguelike structure. Pick a hero possessing unique attributes and skills, fight through each level of monsters, collect some stat improvements (which are teeth), and overcome a few stage-ending champions. Simple enough!

The Novel Gameplay Loop

The way you actually clear a dungeon room, however. Each instance you start another stage, the game presents a 4x4 grid of boxes. Each square holds a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To make a move, you simply click on one of the four rows, but the exact space you land in is up to chance.

You might see a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You start with a quarter likelihood of landing on any given square in a row.

Subsequently, your chances are recalculated. So do you press your luck, or do you choose on a safer line first and try to make more cautious selections early? This is the tension between chance and safety in action in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing after you develop its rhythm.

Manipulating Probability

The procedural hook is that your odds can be manipulated through a run by collecting teeth that modify the types of squares you're more attracted to. For example, you may obtain a perk that will decrease your odds of hitting a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of getting a reward too.

• Crafting a loadout is about influencing the statistics as best you can to have a higher chance at landing where you want.
• During one attempt, I put all my stat upgrades toward brute force and picked as many teeth I could that would improve my probability of being drawn to monsters aligned with that strength.
• During a separate session, I constructed my hero around treasure chests and paired that with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies each time I opened a chest.

The strategic possibilities are limited, but they are sufficient to engage with to allow you to tweak numbers according to your strategy.

A Persistent Tension

Naturally, it remains a game of chance. You constantly face the risk that you have an 80% chance to hit the square you want but wind up hitting on an enemy that would take out your last bit of health. All selections is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you navigate a level and choose whether to press onward or when to move on to the subsequent stage instead of testing fate.

Items like enemy-killing bombs help cut down the chance, similar to some character abilities. One hero's unique ability, charged after clearing four squares, lets gamers to choose a vertical column rather than a row on a turn. By employing this strategically, you can reserve that option for an optimal time to circumvent a perilous selection. You'll find an astonishing amount of nuance in the simple act of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is remaining in its preview phase, and it has at least one more update to go before the final game is launched. Another playable adventurer and a fresh guardian are expected to drop by the end of January. The full launch may not be long after, but the creators haven't set a final date yet.

A Final Thought

Whenever it's fully released, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I've been thoroughly captivated with it, finding all of little secrets and storing my run rewards every session to reveal a continuous trickle of meta progression rewards, featuring additional heroes and items purchasable while playing. As of now, I am yet to found the deepest level, and I have a sense I'll continue attempting that goal when the full version launches. Count me in for the long haul.