🔗 Share this article

After playing well over 200 recent games this year, It's time to wrapping things up on 2025. My year-end list is out in the world, and I'm satisfied with the final results, even knowing numerous fantastic releases may have dropped under the radar. Now, there's nothing for me to do other than unwind, disconnect briefly, and perhaps take a nice walk in the— oh no, stumbled upon a amazing experience. And just like that, goodbye to my plans!

A Surprising Favorite Surfaces

In my more laid-back sessions, often set aside for a handful of quirky titles, I've discovered potentially my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that reimagines a classic labyrinth explorer into a chance-driven game of significant risk danger and payoff. Take this as a hipster's insider tip: If you enjoy being aware of a game before it's cool, test out Sol Cesto so you can punch a hole in your indie credit card.

A Strategic Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's different from everything I've previously experienced. The premise is that you need to explore a dungeon, going down level by level to find the sun, which has disappeared from its world. When you play, that makes for some standard crawl progression. Pick a hero who has parameters and powers, defeat enemies on every stage of enemies, acquire some passive buffs (in the form of teeth), and vanquish a few stage-ending champions. Easy to grasp!

The Distinctive Core Mechanic

The way you effectively complete a dungeon room, though. Each instance you enter a new floor, you see a four-by-four matrix of boxes. All spaces features a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To proceed, you choose on one of the horizontal lines, but the specific tile you select is determined by luck.

You may face a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You start with a one-in-four probability of hitting a specific tile in a row.

After that, the odds shift. So do you take the risk, or do you click on a alternative option first and attempt some less risky choices early? Herein lies the risk-reward dynamic on display in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing when you acquire an understanding of it.

Shaping the Odds

The procedural hook is that your percentages can be shaped over the course of a session by gathering teeth that modify the types of squares you're more likely to land on. As an instance, you could acquire a perk that will reduce the probability of landing on a trap, but will also decrease the odds of finding a reward too.

• Creating a build is about tweaking the numbers as best you can to have a higher chance at selecting the optimal square.
• In one run, I invested my stat upgrades toward physical attack/defense and picked as many teeth I could that would boost my chances of attracting me toward monsters with that damage type.
• In another run, I built my character around reward boxes and coupled it with a perk that would debuff nearby foes each time I opened a chest.

The build options are not endless, but it provides ample to engage with to let you manipulate numbers to your preference.

A Constant Risk

Unsurprisingly, it's still a game of chance. There remains the possibility that you have an 80% chance to hit the preferred space but ultimately choose a foe that would eliminate your final hit point. All selections is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you navigate a level and determine if to continue selecting or to advance to the next floor instead of pushing your luck.

Tools such as explosive devices assist in minimizing the chance, just like some special skills. One hero's signature move, activated once making four moves, enables you to choose a vertical column rather than a row on a turn. If you play this strategically, you can save that move for an optimal time to sidestep a dangerous choice. It's a surprising degree of depth in the simple act of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is still in its preview phase, and it has a final update scheduled before the full version is released. An additional hero and a fresh guardian are planned for release before the conclusion of January. The 1.0 release probably isn't long after, but the creators haven't set a concrete launch day yet.

A Concluding Endorsement

Whenever the complete game arrives, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your radar. For the past week, I've been positively obsessed with it, uncovering each of small details and banking my earned gold every session to reveal a continuous trickle of permanent unlocks, including additional heroes and items purchasable during a run. To this day, I have not found the deepest level, and I get the feeling I'll still be pursuing that objective when 1.0 finally hits. Count me in for the entire experience.