🔗 Share this article

Having experienced more than 200 new releases this year, It's time to closing the book on 2025. My year-end list is out in the world, and I am at peace with the ultimate rankings, even knowing a host of stellar titles likely fell under the radar. Now, there's plan is to other than unwind, unplug a little, and maybe enjoy a refreshing hike in the— well, shoot, discovered one more amazing experience. And just like that, goodbye to my peaceful respite!

A Surprising Front-Runner Appears

During my laid-back sessions, usually reserved for a few oddball curiosities, I've discovered potentially my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a traditional labyrinth explorer into a probability-fueled game of major consequence peril and prize. View this an early adopter's heads-up: If you take pride discovering a game before it's cool, sample Sol Cesto so you can burn a spot in your indie credit card.

A Calculated Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's different from everything I've previously experienced. The concept is that you must venture into a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper in search of the sun, which has disappeared from the fantasy world. In practice, this creates some recognizable genre framework. Select a character possessing unique stats and abilities, clear floor after floor of enemies, acquire some passive buffs (in the form of teeth), and defeat a few stage-ending champions. Simple enough!

The Novel Gameplay Loop

How you truly navigate a chamber, however. Whenever you enter a new floor, you see a sixteen-square board of boxes. All spaces features a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To make a move, you just select on one of the four rows, but which square you select is up to chance.

You could encounter a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You start with a quarter likelihood of selecting a specific tile in a row.

Subsequently, your probabilities change. So do you take the risk, or do you click on a safer line first and aim for more cautious selections early? This is the push-your-luck gameplay at play in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating after you develop an understanding of it.

Influencing Chance

The roguelike twist is that your odds can be manipulated during an attempt by gathering teeth that alter which objects you're more attracted to. To illustrate, you may obtain a perk that will reduce the probability of encountering a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of finding a reward too.

• Crafting a loadout is about tweaking the numbers optimally to have a better shot at landing where you want.
• In one run, I focused my power boosts toward brute force and chose every teeth I could that would boost my chances of attracting me toward monsters of that variety.
• In another run, I constructed my hero around reward boxes and combined that with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters every time I opened a chest.

The customization choices are somewhat constrained, but there's enough to engage with to enable you to influence the odds according to your strategy.

A Persistent Tension

Unsurprisingly, it's still a game of chance. You constantly face the chance that you have an 80% chance to hit the desired tile but wind up hitting a foe that would deplete your last bit of health. Every move is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you clear a floor out and choose whether to continue selecting or to advance to the next floor instead of pushing your luck.

Consumables including destructive ordnance help cut down the chance, just like some character abilities. A particular character's special power, activated once selecting four tiles, allows players to select a column rather than a horizontal line on a turn. If you play this strategically, you can save that move for the right moment to sidestep a dangerous choice. It's a surprising amount of nuance in the basic action of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is currently in early access, and it has at least one more update to go before the complete edition is released. An additional hero and a fresh guardian are expected to drop by the end of January. The 1.0 release may not be far behind, but the studio haven't committed to a final date yet.

A Final Thought

Whenever its 1.0 launch occurs, you should consider put Sol Cesto in your sights. I have been thoroughly captivated with it, discovering its small details and storing my run rewards in each run to reveal a continuous trickle of meta progression rewards, featuring new characters and items purchasable while playing. I still haven't reached the bottom, and I get the feeling I'll still be working on that task when the full version launches. Count me in for the complete journey.