🔗 Share this article

Following my time with more than 200 fresh titles this year, I'm formally wrapping things up on 2025. My year-end list is out in the world, and I feel content with the ultimate rankings, despite being aware a host of fantastic releases likely fell under the radar. Now, there's nothing for me to do other than unwind, unplug a little, and perhaps take a pleasant stroll in the— well, shoot, discovered one more great game. There go my plans!

A Surprising Favorite Surfaces

During my laid-back sessions, usually reserved for a handful of quirky titles, I've discovered potentially my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a classic dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of significant risk peril and prize. Consider this an early adopter's heads-up: If you relish in knowing about a game before it hits the mainstream, give Sol Cesto a try so you can burn a spot in your gaming budget.

A Strategic Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's a departure from all I've ever played. The premise is that you need to explore a dungeon, descending floor after floor in search of the sun, which has disappeared from its world. When you play, that makes for some recognizable genre framework. Select a character who has stats and abilities, fight through each level of enemies, acquire some permanent upgrades (in the form of teeth), and overcome a few biome bosses. Simple enough!

The Distinctive Gameplay Loop

The method by which you truly navigate a area, though. Whenever you start another stage, you see a four-by-four matrix of boxes. All spaces either contains a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To make a move, you simply click on one of the horizontal lines, but the exact space you end up on is determined by luck.

You may face a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You start with a quarter likelihood of selecting any given square in a row.

Then, you'll odds shift. So do you take the risk, or do you opt on a alternative option first and aim for less risky choices early? Herein lies the tension between chance and safety in action in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing after you develop its rhythm.

Influencing Chance

The procedural hook is that your odds can be manipulated over the course of a session by picking up teeth that modify the types of squares you're more likely to land on. For example, you may obtain a perk that will lower your chances of landing on a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of landing on a treasure chest too.

• Developing a strategy is about tweaking the numbers as best you can to have a better shot at selecting the optimal square.
• On a particular session, I focused my stat upgrades toward brute force and picked as many teeth possible that would improve my probability of landing on monsters of that variety.
• In another run, I constructed my hero around loot caches and paired that with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters whenever I opened a chest.

The strategic possibilities are somewhat constrained, but there's enough to work with to let you manipulate numbers the way you want.

An Ever-Present Tension

Of course, it's still a game of chance. There's always the chance that you have a likely outcome to hit the desired tile but wind up hitting on an enemy that would eliminate your final hit point. All selections is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you navigate a level and determine if to continue selecting or when to move on to the following level as opposed to risking it all.

Consumables including destructive ordnance assist in minimizing the chance, just like some hero powers. One hero's unique ability, charged after making four moves, enables you to select a vertical line rather than a horizontal line for that move. Should you use this move wisely, you can hold that ability for a crucial point to sidestep a dangerous choice. There's a shocking degree of depth in the basic action of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is currently in its preview phase, and it has at least one more update scheduled before the complete edition is released. An additional hero and a additional end-level foe are expected to drop before the conclusion of January. The official version may not be much later, but the creators haven't committed to a concrete launch day yet.

A Parting Thought

No matter when its 1.0 launch occurs, you should consider put Sol Cesto on your radar. I've been positively obsessed with it, finding all of little secrets and banking my earned gold in each run to reveal a continuous trickle of meta progression rewards, featuring fresh adventurers and items available for acquisition mid-attempt. As of now, I am yet to found the deepest level, and I get the feeling I'll continue attempting that goal when 1.0 finally hits. Count me in for the complete journey.