🔗 Share this article

Following my time with more than 200 recent games this year, I'm formally turning the page on 2025. My year-end list is live, and I feel content with the ultimate rankings, accepting that numerous excellent games probably slipped through the cracks. Now, there's plan is to except relax, disconnect briefly, and perhaps take a refreshing hike in the— ah crap, found another great game. And just like that, goodbye to my intentions!

An Early Front-Runner Appears

During my casual gaming time, often set aside for a few oddball curiosities, I've encountered potentially my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual roguelike for Windows PC that deconstructs a traditional labyrinth explorer into a luck-based game of significant risk peril and prize. View this an early adopter's heads-up: If you relish in knowing about a game before it's cool, sample Sol Cesto so you can make a dent in your gaming budget.

A Strategic Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's different from everything I've previously experienced. The concept is that you must venture into a dungeon, descending floor after floor on a quest for the sun, which has disappeared from its world. Mechanically, this creates some standard crawl progression. Select a character possessing unique attributes and skills, defeat enemies on every stage of foes, acquire some permanent upgrades (represented as teeth), and defeat a few stage-ending champions. Simple enough!

The Novel Central System

The way you effectively complete a dungeon room, is unique. Every time you start another stage, the game presents a four-by-four matrix of boxes. Each square features a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To explore a room, you choose on one of the four rows, but the exact space you select is up to chance.

You might see a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You begin with a 25% chance of landing on any given square in a row.

Subsequently, your chances are recalculated. So do you take the risk, or do you click on a different row first and attempt some less risky choices early? Herein lies the push-your-luck gameplay at play in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing once you get a feel for it.

Shaping the Odds

The meta-layer is that your percentages can be shaped through a run by picking up teeth that change what things you're more attracted to. To illustrate, you might get 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 influencing the statistics as best you can to have a improved likelihood at getting your desired outcome.
• During one attempt, I put all my power boosts toward brute force and picked as many teeth I could that would improve my probability of attracting me toward monsters aligned with that strength.
• In another run, I built my character 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 limited, but it provides ample to engage with to let you manipulate probabilities the way you want.

An Ever-Present Gamble

Unsurprisingly, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There remains the chance that you have an 80% chance to select the preferred space but end up landing on an enemy that would eliminate your last bit of health. Every move is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you clear a floor out and determine if to press onward or to proceed to the following level as opposed to testing fate.

Items like destructive ordnance aid in reducing the chance, as do some special skills. One hero's special power, powered up by clearing four squares, enables you to select a vertical column instead of a row on a turn. By employing this strategically, you can hold that ability for a crucial point to sidestep a dangerous choice. There's a shocking amount of nuance in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is still in its preview phase, and it has another update scheduled until the final game is unleashed. Another playable adventurer and a new boss are expected to drop sometime in January. The 1.0 release likely won't be long after, but the creators haven't committed to a specific release window yet.

A Concluding Endorsement

Regardless of when its 1.0 launch occurs, you should consider put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. For the past week, I've been completely engrossed with it, discovering its hidden nuances and storing my run rewards per attempt to access a constant flow of persistent upgrades, such as fresh adventurers and items I can buy mid-attempt. To this day, I have not reached the bottom, and I suspect I'll still be pursuing that objective when the official release drops. I'm committed for the long haul.