You are my sunshine…THERE IS NO SUNSHINE
Sol Cesto is not a complicated game, it is definitely weird, but it’s not complicated. There isn’t an endless system of mechanics slowly uncovering as you play, like a lot of other roguelikes use to entice players. That’s no slight against it, though. Sol Cesto feels deliberately small in a very thoughtful way. Sure, there are some things to discover and the game certainly has an uncanny mysterious vibe to it but your general understanding of the game and most of its systems will be crystal clear to you after just a run or two.
At its core, Sol Cesto is about risk management. When you dive into the dungeon in Sol Cesto you’re presented with the only screen and layout you’ll see for the remainder of the game. A 4 by 4 grid of tiles populated with enemies, treasures, strawberries, or traps. This grid is flanked by all the information you’ll need to play the game. On the right you’ll find your character stats, a button to use your special power, the door you must unlock to get to the next floor, and an adorable frog that will hold all the gold you’ve gained during a run. On the opposite side of the screen you have your teeth(yes, I said teeth), an inventory of instant-use items like potions or bombs, and a book filled with what I’ll call “Attraction percentages” that I’ll talk about in just a minute.
The goal of each screen is simple, hop to enough tiles in the dungeon grid to open the door to the next level. You do this by selecting one of the four rows. When you hover over a row all four tiles in that row will be highlighted and show you two very important pieces of information. First, it will show you a percentage in the top right corner of each tile. This is the chance that you will end up on that particular tile if you select this row. Second, the tile will show you how much damage you will take, if any, from any enemies in that row should you land on them.
That’s it.
Again, Sol Cesto thrives in its simplicity. It doesn’t ask you to divine information from it. You’re presented with everything you need to know and have to try to choose the path of least resistance to survive.
Along your journey you’ll meet a cast of characters that sit somewhere on the line between Jim Henson puppets and your worst nightmares as a child. It’s at these encounters where you’ll try to sway those attraction percentages and your own power more in your favor. More importantly it’s where you’ll pick teeth to fill up your medieval grill.
I told you this game was weird didn’t I?
The teeth are powerful modifiers that will strengthen or lower your attraction to certain kinds of tiles or maybe grant you special conditional powers. Most of these also have a potential downside depending on how you’ve built yourself. So, a tooth may grant you -25% to trap tiles but it comes with a +5% to Strength based monsters. If you’re building toward strength this is a great piece to take with you, but if you haven’t been, the dungeon just became a little more risky.
There is a meta-progression tree that fills up as you bring more gold back to the surface. So make sure you’re sending back what you can before you die.
When you do eventually perish you’ll be met with, what I believe is, one of the greatest single pieces of pre-death animation art I’ve ever seen. Every single character has their own version and each one is as glorious as the last.
I absolutely adore the visual design of this game. Some of it looks like it was plucked out of those weird in-between scenes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. That very old, unsettling 70s kind of art that somehow balances itself on the fence of nostalgia and terror. It truly has its own, distinct style. It wears its weird proudly on its sleeve in the best possible way.
At the end of the day that’s what I really love about this game. Sol Cesto never tries to hide what it is. It quietly and confidently enters itself into the gaming sphere showing you all of its teeth right out of the gate. It puts everything in front of you.
You knew the odds. You saw the potential damage. You picked that row,
And that’s where the game finds its voice. Not in complexity, but in clarity. It strips the roguelike formula down to something smaller, sharper, and just a little stranger. Teeth in your inventory? A frog holding your money? Creatures that feel like they crawled out of a childhood dream you forgot you had? It shouldn’t work as well as it does, but it leans into that weirdness instead of explaining it.
Sol Cesto is simple, honest, and a little unsettling in a way that sticks with you longer than you expect. It doesn’t need to grow bigger. It just needed to be precise.
And it succeeds because it is.
