🔗 Share this article

Having experienced more than 200 recent games this year, I am officially wrapping things up on 2025. My best-of compilation is published, and I'm satisfied with the ultimate rankings, accepting that plenty of stellar titles may have dropped under the radar. Currently, my only plan is to other than unwind, unplug a little, and possibly go for a refreshing hike in the— well, shoot, found another brilliant title. So much for my plans!

A Premature Front-Runner Appears

In my more off-hours play, usually reserved for a handful of quirky titles, I've discovered what might become my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that reimagines a conventional dungeon crawler into a luck-based game of significant risk danger and payoff. Consider this a preview for the in-the-know: If you enjoy discovering a game before it's cool, test out Sol Cesto so you can burn a spot in your gaming budget.

A Calculated Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's a departure from all I've ever played. The premise is that you need to explore a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper to find the sun, which has disappeared from this mythical realm. Mechanically, that makes for some standard crawl progression. Choose an adventurer who has parameters and powers, clear floor after floor of enemies, collect some stat improvements (which are teeth), and overcome a few stage-ending champions. Simple enough!

The Novel Core Mechanic

How you truly navigate a chamber, is unique. Each instance you begin a fresh level, the game presents a 4x4 grid of boxes. Each square features a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To explore a room, you choose on one of the horizontal lines, but the specific tile you land in is up to chance.

You may face a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You start with a quarter likelihood of hitting any given square in a row.

Subsequently, your chances are recalculated. So do you press your luck, or do you click on a safer line first and try to make safer moves early? This is the push-your-luck gameplay on display in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing after you develop a feel for it.

Influencing Chance

The procedural hook is that your odds can be manipulated through a run 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 decrease your odds of hitting a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of getting a treasure chest too.

• Developing a strategy is about tweaking the numbers optimally to have a better shot at landing where you want.
• On a particular session, I invested my stat upgrades toward melee prowess and picked as many teeth possible that would increase my odds of being drawn to monsters of that variety.
• In another run, I built my character around treasure chests and combined that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes whenever I opened a chest.

The build options are not endless, but they are sufficient to engage with to enable you to influence probabilities to your preference.

A Constant Tension

Unsurprisingly, it remains a game of chance. There remains the risk that you have an 80% chance to hit the desired tile but end up landing on an enemy that would eliminate your remaining life. All selections is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you clear a floor out and choose whether to continue selecting or when to move on to the following level rather than pushing your luck.

Items like enemy-killing bombs aid in reducing the chance, similar to some character abilities. One hero's unique ability, powered up by selecting four tiles, allows players to choose a column in place of a horizontal row on a turn. If you play this move wisely, you can hold that ability for an optimal time to avoid a risky decision. You'll find an astonishing degree of depth in the simple act of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is remaining in early access, and it has at least one more update planned before the final game is released. Another playable adventurer and a fresh guardian are expected to drop before the conclusion of January. The 1.0 release may not be far behind, but the creators haven't set a specific release window yet.

A Parting Thought

No matter when it's fully released, you should consider put Sol Cesto in your sights. I have been positively obsessed with it, uncovering each of hidden nuances and banking my earned gold per attempt to access a constant flow of persistent upgrades, featuring fresh adventurers and items purchasable while playing. I still haven't found the deepest level, and I have a sense I'll still be working on that task when the full version launches. I'm committed for the long haul.