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Having experienced well over 200 fresh titles this year, I'm formally turning the page on 2025. My best-of compilation is out in the world, and I feel content with the final results, despite being aware plenty of fantastic releases probably slipped through the cracks. At this point, it's nothing for me to do except relax, unplug a little, and maybe enjoy a nice walk in the— oh no, stumbled upon a great game. So much for my plans!

An Early Favorite Surfaces

During my casual gaming time, often set aside for a selection of unusual games, I've encountered what might become my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual roguelike for Windows PC that breaks down a classic labyrinth explorer into a chance-driven game of significant risk peril and prize. Take this as a hipster's insider tip: If you enjoy being aware of a game before it's cool, give Sol Cesto a try so you can make a dent in your gaming budget.

A Strategic Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's a departure from all I'm familiar with. The setup is that you must venture into a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper to find the sun, which has gone missing from this mythical realm. In practice, that makes for some standard crawl progression. Pick a hero possessing unique stats and abilities, fight through each level of enemies, acquire some stat improvements (which are teeth), and defeat a few stage-ending champions. Simple enough!

The Unique Central System

The method by which you effectively complete a area, is unique. Whenever you start another stage, you're shown a 4x4 grid of boxes. Each square either contains a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To proceed, you just select on one of the four rows, but which square you land in is up to chance.

You may face a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You initially will have a 25% chance of landing on a specific tile in a row.

Subsequently, your probabilities change. So do you press your luck, or do you choose on a different row first and aim for less risky choices early? That's the tension between chance and safety in action in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing when you acquire a feel for it.

Shaping the Odds

The procedural hook is that your percentages can be shaped during an attempt by collecting teeth that alter which objects you're more attracted to. To illustrate, you may obtain a perk that will reduce the probability of landing on a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of finding a treasure chest too.

• Creating a build is about manipulating math to the utmost to have a improved likelihood at getting your desired outcome.
• During one attempt, I focused my attribute improvements toward melee prowess and chose every teeth possible that would boost my chances of landing on monsters of that variety.
• On a different attempt, I built my character around loot caches and combined that with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters whenever I claimed a reward.

The strategic possibilities are not endless, but they are sufficient to work with to let you manipulate probabilities to your preference.

A Constant Tension

Naturally, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There's always the chance that you have a likely outcome to select the preferred space but ultimately choose a foe that would deplete your remaining life. Each click is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you navigate a level and determine if to press onward or to advance to the following level as opposed to risking it all.

Items like destructive ordnance aid in reducing the chance, as do some special skills. One hero's signature move, activated once selecting four tiles, enables you to select a vertical line in place of a horizontal row on a turn. If you play this move wisely, you can reserve that option for a crucial point to avoid a risky decision. It's a surprising level of strategy in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is remaining in development, and it has another update scheduled until the full version is launched. A new character and a new boss are scheduled to arrive sometime in January. The 1.0 release may not be far behind, but the creators haven't set a specific release window yet.

A Parting Endorsement

Whenever the complete game arrives, you ought to put Sol Cesto in your sights. I have been positively obsessed with it, uncovering each of hidden nuances and banking my earned gold every session to access a constant flow of permanent unlocks, including new characters and items available for acquisition mid-attempt. I still haven't found the deepest level, and I get the feeling I'll continue pursuing that objective when the full version launches. I'm committed for the entire experience.