Having experienced well over 200 recent games this year, I am officially wrapping things up on 2025. My best-of compilation is published, and I am at peace with the ultimate rankings, despite being aware numerous stellar titles probably slipped under the radar. At this point, it's nothing for me to do other than unwind, take a short break, and perhaps take a pleasant stroll in the— well, shoot, stumbled upon a brilliant title. So much for my peaceful respite!
A Premature Front-Runner Appears
In my more casual gaming time, often set aside for a selection of unusual games, I've come across what could be my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that deconstructs a conventional labyrinth explorer into a probability-fueled game of significant risk risk and reward. View this an early adopter's heads-up: If you enjoy being aware of a game before it's cool, test out Sol Cesto so you can burn a spot in your wallet for unique titles.
A Strategic Roguelike Twist
Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's unlike anything I've previously experienced. The setup is that you must venture into a dungeon, descending floor after floor to find the sun, which has disappeared from this mythical realm. When you play, that makes for some standard crawl progression. Select a character with their own attributes and skills, defeat enemies on every stage of enemies, acquire some passive buffs (represented as teeth), and defeat a few stage-ending champions. Straightforward, right!
The Novel Core Mechanic
The method by which you effectively complete a dungeon room, however. Each instance you begin a fresh level, you're shown a 4x4 grid of boxes. Each square features a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To explore a room, you choose on one of the four rows, but which square you select is determined by luck.
You could encounter a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You initially will have a 25% chance of landing on a particular space in a row.
After that, the chances are recalculated. So do you press your luck, or do you opt on a alternative option first and attempt some safer moves early? That's the tension between chance and safety at play in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing when you acquire a feel for it.
Shaping the Odds
The procedural hook is that your percentages can be shaped through a run by picking up teeth that alter which objects you're more likely to land on. As an instance, you may obtain a perk that will reduce the probability of encountering a trap, but will also decrease the odds of getting a treasure chest too.
- Crafting a loadout is about influencing the statistics optimally to have a improved likelihood at landing where you want.
- During one attempt, I focused my stat upgrades toward physical attack/defense and picked as many teeth possible that would improve my probability of landing on monsters of that variety.
- During a separate session, I built my character around loot caches and paired that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes each time I claimed a reward.
The build options are not endless, but it provides ample to work with to let you manipulate probabilities according to your strategy.
A Persistent Tension
Of course, it's still a game of chance. There remains the chance that you have a high probability to land on the square you want but end up landing on an enemy that would take out your final hit point. Every move is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you work through a stage and decide when to continue selecting or to proceed to the subsequent stage as opposed to testing fate.
Consumables including enemy-killing bombs help cut down the chance, similar to some character abilities. A particular character's special power, powered up by making four moves, allows players to click on a vertical column instead of a horizontal line for that move. By employing your cards right, you can reserve that option for an optimal time to circumvent a perilous selection. There's a shocking degree of depth in the basic action of clicking.
Looking Ahead
Sol Cesto is currently in development, and it has at least one more update to go before the final game is released. An additional hero and a new boss are planned for release before the conclusion of January. The 1.0 release may not be much later, but the game's developers haven't committed to a specific release window yet.
A Concluding Thought
Whenever its 1.0 launch occurs, you ought to put Sol Cesto in your sights. For the past week, I've been completely engrossed with it, discovering its little secrets and storing my run rewards per attempt to access a constant flow of meta progression rewards, featuring additional heroes and items available for acquisition mid-attempt. As of now, I am yet to completed the dungeon, and I get the feeling I will remain attempting that goal when the full version launches. I'm committed for the long haul.
