🔗 Share this article

Having experienced well over 200 fresh titles this year, I'm formally closing the book on 2025. My annual roundup is published, and I feel content with the final results, accepting that plenty of excellent games may have dropped under the radar. At this point, it's plan is to except relax, take a short break, and possibly go for a nice walk in the— ah crap, stumbled upon a great game. So much for my plans!

A Premature Contender Emerges

In my more off-hours play, typically earmarked for a few oddball curiosities, I've encountered potentially my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar roguelike for Windows PC that reimagines a conventional labyrinth explorer into a probability-fueled game of major consequence peril and prize. Take this as an early adopter's heads-up: If you relish discovering a game before it hits the mainstream, give Sol Cesto a try so you can burn a spot in your gaming budget.

A Calculated 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, progressing deeper and deeper on a quest for the sun, which has disappeared from this mythical realm. When you play, this results in some familiar roguelike structure. Choose an adventurer possessing unique attributes and skills, clear floor after floor of foes, pick up some permanent upgrades (which are teeth), and defeat a few stage-ending champions. Easy to grasp!

The Novel Core Mechanic

How you actually clear a area, is unique. Every time you start another stage, the game presents a sixteen-square board of boxes. Every tile holds a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To proceed, you simply click on one of the horizontal lines, but the exact space you end up on is a matter of probability.

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

After that, the odds shift. The question becomes: Do you go for it, or do you opt on a alternative option first and aim for more cautious selections early? Herein lies the risk-reward dynamic at play in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing once you get a feel for it.

Influencing Chance

The roguelike twist is that your odds can be manipulated through a run by gathering teeth that alter which objects you're more likely to land on. As an instance, you could acquire a perk that will lower your chances of hitting a trap, but will also decrease the odds of finding a reward too.

• Crafting a loadout is about influencing the statistics to the utmost to have a higher chance at selecting the optimal square.
• During one attempt, I put all my power boosts toward brute force and selected all the teeth I could that would increase my odds of landing on monsters of that variety.
• In another run, I developed my adventurer around reward boxes and combined that with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies whenever I opened a chest.

The build options are somewhat constrained, but they are sufficient to work with to allow you to tweak the odds according to your strategy.

An Ever-Present Gamble

Unsurprisingly, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There remains the possibility that you have a likely outcome to select the preferred space but end up landing a monster that would take out your remaining life. Every move is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you work through a stage and determine if to keep clicking or to advance to the next floor instead of risking it all.

Consumables including enemy-killing bombs aid in reducing the chance, similar to some character abilities. An adventurer's special power, activated once making four moves, enables you to choose a column in place of a row for that move. By employing this strategically, you can save that move for a crucial point to circumvent a perilous selection. You'll find an astonishing degree of depth in the simple act of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is remaining in early access, and it has another update planned until the final game is launched. Another playable adventurer and a additional end-level foe are planned for release by the end of January. The full launch probably isn't much later, but the studio haven't announced a final date yet.

A Concluding Thought

No matter when its 1.0 launch occurs, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I have been positively obsessed with it, finding all of hidden nuances and saving my accumulated currency in each run to unlock a steady stream of permanent unlocks, including additional heroes and items available for acquisition while playing. As of now, I am yet to reached the bottom, and I have a sense I will remain working on that task when 1.0 finally hits. Sign me up for the long haul.