🔗 Share this article

After playing more than 200 recent games this year, It's time to wrapping things up on 2025. My year-end list is live, and I am at peace with the ultimate rankings, accepting that numerous stellar titles probably slipped by the wayside. At this point, it's job is to except relax, disconnect briefly, and perhaps take a refreshing hike in the— well, shoot, found another great game. And just like that, goodbye to my peaceful respite!

An Early Front-Runner Appears

During my casual gaming time, typically earmarked for a handful of quirky titles, I've come across what could be my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar roguelike for Windows PC that deconstructs a classic labyrinth explorer into a probability-fueled game of high stakes peril and prize. Take this as an early adopter's heads-up: If you relish discovering a game before it's cool, test out Sol Cesto so you can punch a hole in your indie credit card.

A Strategic Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game 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 vanished from its world. Mechanically, that makes for some familiar roguelike structure. Select a character with their own attributes and skills, clear floor after floor of monsters, pick up some passive buffs (represented as teeth), and defeat a few biome bosses. Simple enough!

The Distinctive Central System

The method by which you truly navigate a chamber, though. Whenever you enter a new floor, you're shown a four-by-four matrix of boxes. Every tile features a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To make a move, you choose on one of the four rows, but the exact space you land in is a matter of probability.

You could encounter a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You start with a 25% chance of landing on a particular space in a row.

After that, the probabilities change. So do you take the risk, or do you click on a alternative option first and aim for more cautious selections early? That's the push-your-luck gameplay at play in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing when you acquire a feel for it.

Influencing Chance

The procedural hook is that your odds can be manipulated through a run by picking up teeth that change what things you're drawn toward. For example, you might get a perk that will decrease your odds of landing on a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of getting a treasure chest too.

• Creating a build is about influencing the statistics to the utmost to have a improved likelihood at selecting the optimal square.
• During one attempt, I put all my stat upgrades toward brute force and selected all the teeth possible that would boost my chances of landing on monsters with that damage type.
• 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 secured loot.

The customization choices are not endless, but they are sufficient to engage with to allow you to tweak probabilities according to your strategy.

A Persistent Risk

Of course, it remains a game of chance. There's always the chance that you have a high probability to select the preferred space but wind up hitting a monster that would deplete your final hit point. All selections is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you navigate a level and determine if to keep clicking or to advance to the following level rather than risking it all.

Items like explosive devices aid in reducing the chance, just like some hero powers. One hero's signature move, powered up by clearing four squares, allows players to choose a vertical line instead of a horizontal line for that move. By employing this strategically, you can reserve that option for a crucial point to circumvent a perilous selection. You'll find an astonishing amount of nuance in the simple act of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is still in its preview phase, and it has at least one more update to go until the full version is released. Another playable adventurer and a fresh guardian are scheduled to arrive by the end of January. The full launch likely won't be far behind, but the studio haven't announced a concrete launch day yet.

A Parting Recommendation

Regardless of when its 1.0 launch occurs, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I have been positively obsessed with it, discovering its hidden nuances and saving my accumulated currency per attempt to reveal a continuous trickle of meta progression rewards, such as additional heroes and items purchasable while playing. I still haven't found the deepest level, and I get the feeling I'll continue attempting that goal when 1.0 finally hits. Count me in for the complete journey.