Sol Cesto: Rescuing the Sun - Review

There are quite a few gems out there when it comes to roguelite games, and from now on we need to add Sol Cesto to the list. The concept is dead simple: the sun has disappeared, and the world has plunged into darkness.

The sunlight has been captured by an underground den of monsters, and your role, as a hero raising to the challenge, is to make it to the bottom of that deadly pit to rescue the sun to save humanity. Regular daily quest, right?

In practice

This is very much like a board game. Every level of the pit is made up of 16 squares, 4 lines by 4 columns. The squares are typically filled by one of the following:

• a monster
• a flower (that gives you back one heart)
• a chest (that provides money)
• a trap (that makes you lose a heart, or poisons you, spikes or mushrooms)

You get to choose on which “line” your character is going to be sent, but the actual tile on the line (one of the 4) is randomly chosen - so you are playing with probabilities.

When you end up on a tile occupied by a monster, a fight occurs, and is predictable, based on your level of strength and you level of magic. When you play with the knight (one of the early heroes available), you have 2 units of strength and 1 of magic. If you attack an enemy that has the same strength level, you can kill them directly and not lose any heart. However, if you fight one with a strength of 3, you will lose one heart. One with 4 strength, you lose 2 hearts, and so on. You usually start with 5 hearts so you need to be careful about not attacking too strong monsters.

To clear one level, you do not need to clean every single tile. You just need to go on 5 or 6 tiles, and that will open the door to the next level going deeper underground (like Jamiroquai). You don’t have to escape immediately, you can actually keep clearing some more tiles if you feel lucky, punk.

It makes sense to do so when there are lot of chests or flowers available. There is very little reason to do so. You only get awarded one extra coin of money for clearing a level completely! It’s nothing. Just don’t do it, ok?

Thewre is also the sun power. When you clear enough tiles (5 or 6 depending on your character), your sun power will be activated. The knight’s sun power, for example, let you move across a column instead of a row for your next movement.

A very important power to use at the right time! Each character has quite different sun powers, so you’ll have to experiment, and try out their different talents (unique skills).

Progression

As you go deeper, you end up in some bonus levels, like the shop where you can use some of the coins you got from the chests to buy some items. What kind of items? The dice, for example, resets the level completely, giving you a chance to get less monsters, or a better layout on the grid. The potion give you back one heart. The bomb explodes all monsters on a single line. And there’s a lot more, appearing somewhat randomly.

You also get to meet the statue: a horrid monster in stone, showing its teeth. At first, there’s nothing to do with it, but as you unlock more stuff (more on that later), some of the teeth become available to grab, so that your hero can insert one of them in their mouth.

Such teeth give you some probabilities boosts: more chance to attack normal monsters instead of magical monsters, more chance to land on chests than on traps, and so on. It’s a very useful way to ensure you will survive a little longer. 10% boost goes a long way to turn the odds in your favor once in a while.

And there’s the forge, where a strange bearded character offers to increase one of your stats by one unit: either strength or magic. Depending on your initial character’s stats, a careful choice changes drastically how you will perform on the next levels.

Another screen that appears usually twice by biome, is the one that lets you send back some or all of your money to the surface.

This ties directly into the upgrade path. The more money you bring back to the surface, the more you can unlock after each death/failure, to increase your odds of making it.

Not just pure dumb luck

Each game hardly lasts very long - most of the time you are done in between 5 and 10 minutes. Of course, there is some luck involved - but making good choices is about increasing your luck. (just like in real life, I might add). Nothing is even given: but you are in control of managing many things that can help you:

• on which line you land
• which items you use and when
• which statue teeth you grab
• when you use your sun power
• whether you jump ASAP to the next level or try to get more flowers or coins

There is a wide enough range of actions possible that it does not feel like you are on rails, destined to lose. Add to that the fact that every hero character plays completely differently, and you have a lot of hours ahead of you to optimize your runs.

And let’s not forget that you can spend the money you bring back to the surface to unlock new abilities, new bonuses new objects in the shops, and of course, new characters (heroes) that you can play with.

You can easily go into a rabbit hole just to unlock everything and see how this increases your chances.

Stylish

What makes the game stand out even more is the unique art style. No generic asset re-use here, a lot of hand-drawn, somewhat cartoonish, unique design went in this game. There’s some kind of amateurish look to it. Maybe on purpose, or maybe not. But you can be sure it stands out! No “easy” pixel art, no fake realism, but true some human doodled this on a piece of paper vibes. As much as I can point out the imperfections, I love it! The knight looks like a mix of a clown and a guy in armor, it’s queer. It’s not just appearances, all heroes and monsters are animated and voiced in a satisfying way.

Even the user interface is cute, reminiscent of games made in the 80s like Captain Blood or Kult (Exxos!), mixing style and functionality all at once. There are hidden secrets in many screens (hint: try clicking on many things!) rewarding curiosity.

The music and sound effects are very good, too. Sometimes mysterious, some other times epic (the first boss fight works really well) and manages to match the action perfectly.

It kind of reminds me of Inscryption sometimes, while it feel even more unleashed.

Made for the Steam Deck

The game is Verified and feels completely at home on the Steam Deck - you play it with the trackpad and the triggers acting as mouse buttons. It feels very natural, and the UI and everything you need to play with is just at the right size. And since each run is relatively short, it’s a perfect game to play on the go when you have a few minutes. It hardly consumes any power so can turn the custom TDP settings way down and enjoy a fairly long series of run if you so wish.

Excuse me, need to go back at it

You get the idea by now, Sol Cesto has convinced me over and over again. It’s hard, and you will die a lot before making the one perfect run, but I find it way more satisfying than games like Slay the Spire - it feels more fun than punishing (while it will spank your ass just as much, make no mistake). I really like the fact that it is grounded in visible, measurable probabilities rather than pure (or hidden) randomness. And the execution is just right in every way. Great concept, great gameplay, and a just right difficulty balance to make you come back and try your (calculated) luck again.

Highly recommended. Oh, and at the time of writing, it’s 30% off on Steam.

Note: we received a key from the publisher for this review.