🔗 Share this article

Following my time with in excess of 200 fresh titles this year, I'm formally turning the page on 2025. My year-end list is published, and I feel content with the ultimate rankings, even knowing plenty of stellar titles likely fell by the wayside. Currently, my only job is to but sit back, take a short break, and maybe enjoy a nice walk in the— oh no, stumbled upon a great game. And just like that, goodbye to my intentions!

A Premature Front-Runner Appears

During my off-hours play, typically earmarked for a few oddball curiosities, I've come across 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 luck-based game of major consequence risk and reward. Consider this a preview for the in-the-know: If you enjoy discovering a game before it hits the mainstream, give Sol Cesto a try so you can make a dent in your wallet for unique titles.

A Strategic Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's unlike anything I've previously experienced. The setup is that you need to explore a dungeon, going down level by level on a quest for the sun, which has disappeared from its world. In practice, that makes for some standard crawl progression. Select a character possessing unique parameters and powers, defeat enemies on every stage of monsters, acquire some stat improvements (represented as teeth), and defeat a few area guardians. Easy to grasp!

The Novel Core Mechanic

The way you truly navigate a dungeon room, however. Each instance you begin a fresh level, you're shown a 4x4 grid of boxes. All spaces holds a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To make a move, you simply click on one of the four rows, but the specific tile you select is determined by luck.

You could encounter a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You initially will have a 25% chance of selecting a particular space in a row.

After that, the probabilities change. The question becomes: Do you press your luck, or do you choose on a safer line first and attempt some safer moves early? That's the push-your-luck gameplay on display in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing when you acquire a feel for it.

Influencing Chance

The roguelike twist is that your percentages can be shaped through a run by gathering teeth that modify the types of squares you're more attracted to. To illustrate, you might get a perk that will lower your chances of encountering a trap, but will also decrease the odds of getting a reward too.

• Creating a build is about manipulating math optimally to have a higher chance at getting your desired outcome.
• In one run, I invested my stat upgrades toward physical attack/defense and selected all the teeth possible that would increase my odds of attracting me toward monsters aligned with that strength.
• On a different attempt, I built my character around loot caches and paired that with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies whenever I opened a chest.

The strategic possibilities are limited, but there's enough to experiment with to let you manipulate numbers according to your strategy.

A Persistent Gamble

Unsurprisingly, it remains a game of chance. You constantly face the chance that you have a likely outcome to select the desired tile but ultimately choose a foe that would take out 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 when to move on to the subsequent stage as opposed to testing fate.

Tools such as explosive devices aid in reducing the chance, similar to some hero powers. One hero's special power, activated once selecting four tiles, lets gamers to select a vertical column in place of a horizontal row for that move. By employing your cards right, you can save that move for a crucial point to sidestep a dangerous choice. You'll find an astonishing level of strategy in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is remaining in development, and it has another update to go before the full version is unleashed. An additional hero and a additional end-level foe are scheduled to arrive by the end of January. The official version probably isn't long after, but the studio haven't set a concrete launch day yet.

A Concluding Recommendation

No matter when its 1.0 launch occurs, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I've been completely engrossed with it, uncovering each of hidden nuances and storing my run rewards per attempt to unlock a steady stream of persistent upgrades, featuring additional heroes and items I can buy while playing. To this day, I have not reached the bottom, and I get the feeling I'll continue attempting that goal when the full version launches. I'm committed for the long haul.