🔗 Share this article

Having experienced more than 200 recent games this year, I am officially wrapping things up on 2025. My best-of compilation is live, and I'm satisfied with the final results, even knowing a host of fantastic releases likely fell by the wayside. Now, there's job is to other than unwind, unplug a little, and perhaps take a pleasant stroll in the— well, shoot, stumbled upon a brilliant title. And just like that, goodbye to my peaceful respite!

An Early Contender Emerges

During my off-hours play, typically earmarked for a few oddball curiosities, I've come across what might become my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that reimagines a traditional dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of major consequence risk and reward. Consider this a hipster's insider tip: If you relish discovering a game before it's popular, give Sol Cesto a try so you can make a dent in your indie credit card.

A Tactical Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's unlike anything I've ever played. The concept is that you must venture into a dungeon, going down level by level on a quest for the sun, which has disappeared from the fantasy world. When you play, that makes for some standard crawl progression. Choose an adventurer possessing unique parameters and powers, clear floor after floor of foes, pick up some passive buffs (in the form of teeth), and defeat a few biome bosses. Easy to grasp!

The Distinctive Central System

How you actually clear a chamber, is unique. Each instance you enter a new floor, the game presents a 4x4 grid of boxes. Every tile either contains a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To explore a room, you choose on one of the horizontal lines, but the specific tile you select is a matter of probability.

You might see a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You initially will have a 25% chance of selecting any given square in a row.

Then, you'll odds shift. The question becomes: Do you take the risk, or do you opt on a alternative option first and try to make less risky choices early? That's the risk-reward dynamic at play in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing when you acquire a feel for it.

Manipulating Probability

The meta-layer is that your percentages can be shaped over the course of a session by gathering teeth that change what things you're more likely to land on. As an instance, you might get a perk that will reduce the probability of encountering a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of getting a reward too.

• Crafting a loadout is about manipulating math as best you can to have a better shot at selecting the optimal square.
• In one run, I invested my stat upgrades toward brute force and picked as many teeth possible that would increase my odds of landing on monsters aligned with that strength.
• During a separate session, I developed my adventurer around loot caches and combined that with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters each time I secured loot.

The build options are not endless, but it provides ample to engage with to allow you to tweak the odds to your preference.

A Persistent Tension

Unsurprisingly, it remains a game of chance. You constantly face the chance that you have an 80% chance to land on the square you want but end up landing a monster that would deplete your final hit point. All selections is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you work through a stage and determine if to press onward or to proceed to the next floor instead of pushing your luck.

Items like destructive ordnance help cut down the chance, as do some special skills. An adventurer's special power, charged after making four moves, lets gamers to choose a vertical line instead of a horizontal row on a turn. By employing this strategically, you can reserve that option for an optimal time to sidestep a dangerous choice. You'll find an astonishing level of strategy in the simple act of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is remaining in its preview phase, and it has another update scheduled until the full version is launched. A new character and a fresh guardian are planned for release by the end of January. The 1.0 release may not be much later, but the game's developers haven't committed to a final date yet.

A Parting Endorsement

Regardless of when it's fully released, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your radar. I've been completely engrossed with it, finding all of little secrets and storing my run rewards every session to unlock a steady stream of persistent upgrades, such as new characters and items purchasable while playing. I still haven't found the deepest level, and I suspect I'll continue working on that task when the full version launches. I'm committed for the entire experience.