🔗 Share this article

After playing more than 200 recent games this year, It's time to closing the book on 2025. My year-end list is published, and I am at peace with the concluding selections, accepting that plenty of excellent games probably slipped by the wayside. Now, there's nothing for me to do but sit back, unplug a little, and perhaps take a nice walk in the— well, shoot, found another great game. So much for my plans!

A Surprising Favorite Surfaces

In my more laid-back sessions, typically earmarked for a selection of unusual games, I've encountered what might become my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive roguelike for Windows PC that breaks down a classic dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of major consequence risk and reward. Consider this a hipster's insider tip: If you relish in knowing about a game before it's popular, test out Sol Cesto so you can make a dent in your gaming budget.

A Calculated Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's unlike anything I've ever played. The concept is that you need to explore a dungeon, going down level by level to find the sun, which has vanished from its world. Mechanically, this creates some familiar roguelike structure. Choose an adventurer with their own attributes and skills, fight through each level of monsters, collect some passive buffs (represented as teeth), and overcome a few stage-ending champions. Straightforward, right!

The Unique Gameplay Loop

The method by which you effectively complete a dungeon room, though. Every time you start another stage, the game presents a four-by-four matrix of boxes. Each square either contains a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To make a move, you choose on one of the four rows, but the specific tile you land in is determined by luck.

You could encounter a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You start with a quarter likelihood of hitting a particular space in a row.

Subsequently, your odds shift. So do you go for it, or do you click on a alternative option first and attempt some safer moves early? This is the risk-reward dynamic on display in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating once you get an understanding of it.

Manipulating Probability

The procedural hook is that your probabilities can be influenced through a run by picking up teeth that modify the types of squares you're more likely to land on. As an instance, you might get a perk that will reduce the probability of hitting a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of finding a reward too.

• Creating a build is about influencing the statistics optimally to have a higher chance at selecting the optimal square.
• During one attempt, I invested my power boosts toward brute force and chose every teeth I could that would increase my odds of landing on monsters of that variety.
• During a separate session, I constructed my hero around reward boxes and combined that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes every time I secured loot.

The customization choices are limited, but it provides ample to work with to allow you to tweak numbers to your preference.

An Ever-Present Risk

Unsurprisingly, it's still a game of chance. There's always the chance that you have a likely outcome to hit the desired tile but end up landing a foe that would take out your final hit point. All selections is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you clear a floor out and choose whether to keep clicking or to proceed to the following level as opposed to risking it all.

Items like destructive ordnance help cut down the chance, similar to some special skills. A particular character's unique ability, charged after selecting four tiles, lets gamers to choose a column rather than a row for that move. By employing your cards right, you can hold that ability for a crucial point to avoid a risky decision. It's a surprising degree of depth in the basic action of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is remaining in early access, and it has another update planned until the final game is released. An additional hero and a additional end-level foe are scheduled to arrive sometime in January. The 1.0 release may not be long after, but the creators haven't set a concrete launch day yet.

A Concluding Recommendation

Whenever the complete game arrives, you should consider put Sol Cesto on your radar. I have been thoroughly captivated with it, discovering its small details and saving my accumulated currency in each run to reveal a continuous trickle of meta progression rewards, featuring additional heroes and items I can buy mid-attempt. To this day, I have not reached the bottom, and I get the feeling I'll continue pursuing that objective when 1.0 finally hits. Count me in for the entire experience.