🔗 Share this article

Having experienced more than 200 recent games this year, I am officially closing the book on 2025. My year-end list is out in the world, and I am at peace with the concluding selections, accepting that a host of stellar titles probably slipped by the wayside. At this point, it's plan is to other than unwind, take a short break, and maybe enjoy a refreshing hike in the— oh no, discovered one more great game. There go my peaceful respite!

A Surprising Contender Emerges

In my more laid-back sessions, usually reserved for a handful of quirky titles, I've encountered potentially my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that deconstructs a classic dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of significant risk peril and prize. View this an early adopter's heads-up: If you relish being aware of a game before it's popular, sample Sol Cesto so you can punch a hole in your gaming budget.

A Tactical Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's unlike anything I've ever played. The concept is that you need to explore a dungeon, descending floor after floor in search of the sun, which has vanished from its world. In practice, that makes for some standard crawl progression. Pick a hero with their own stats and abilities, defeat enemies on every stage of foes, pick up some permanent upgrades (represented as teeth), and overcome a few stage-ending champions. Easy to grasp!

The Novel Gameplay Loop

The way you actually clear a area, though. Whenever you enter a new floor, you see a 4x4 grid of boxes. Each square features a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To explore a room, you choose on one of the horizontal lines, but which square you end up on is a matter of probability.

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 hitting any given square in a row.

Subsequently, your odds shift. The question becomes: Do you go for it, or do you opt on a different row first and try to make safer moves early? That's the tension between chance and safety on display in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing when you acquire its rhythm.

Manipulating Probability

The procedural hook is that your probabilities can be influenced over the course of a session by collecting 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 hitting a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of finding a treasure chest too.

• Crafting a loadout is about influencing the statistics optimally to have a higher chance at landing where you want.
• In one run, I invested my power boosts toward physical attack/defense and picked as many teeth possible that would boost my chances of attracting me toward monsters aligned with that strength.
• On a different attempt, I built my character around treasure chests and combined that with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters each time I opened a chest.

The customization choices are not endless, but they are sufficient to experiment with to let you manipulate numbers to your preference.

An Ever-Present Gamble

Naturally, it remains a game of chance. There remains the possibility that you have a high probability to select the square you want but wind up hitting a monster that would deplete your last bit of health. All selections is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you clear a floor out and decide when to press onward or when to move on to the following level rather than risking it all.

Consumables including enemy-killing bombs assist in minimizing the chance, as do some hero powers. An adventurer's special power, activated once selecting four tiles, enables you to click on a vertical column rather than a row during that action. Should you use this move wisely, you can reserve that option for a crucial point to circumvent a perilous selection. It's a surprising amount of nuance in the simple act of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is remaining in early access, and it has a final update scheduled until the complete edition is unleashed. A new character and a new boss are planned for release by the end of January. The 1.0 release may not be far behind, but the studio haven't announced a final date yet.

A Concluding Thought

No matter when it's fully released, you should consider put Sol Cesto on your radar. For the past week, I've been completely engrossed with it, discovering its hidden nuances and saving my accumulated currency per attempt to reveal a continuous trickle of permanent unlocks, such as fresh adventurers and items available for acquisition during a run. I still haven't found the deepest level, and I get the feeling I'll still be pursuing that objective when the official release drops. Sign me up for the complete journey.