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Having experienced more than 200 fresh titles this year, I'm formally closing the book on 2025. My annual roundup is published, and I am at peace with the final results, despite being aware numerous excellent games likely fell under the radar. Currently, my only job is to other than unwind, take a short break, and maybe enjoy a pleasant stroll in the— oh no, found another brilliant title. So much for my intentions!

A Premature Contender Emerges

During my laid-back sessions, typically earmarked for a few oddball curiosities, I've encountered what might become my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual roguelike for Windows PC that reimagines a traditional dungeon crawler into a luck-based game of significant risk risk and reward. View this an early adopter's heads-up: If you enjoy in knowing about a game before it's cool, give Sol Cesto a try so you can make a dent in your gaming budget.

A Strategic Dungeon-Crawling Innovation

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's unlike anything I'm familiar with. The concept is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, going down level by level in search of the sun, which has gone missing from its world. Mechanically, this creates some standard crawl progression. Pick a hero possessing unique attributes and skills, defeat enemies on every stage of enemies, collect some permanent upgrades (represented as teeth), and vanquish a few biome bosses. Simple enough!

The Unique Gameplay Loop

The method by which you effectively complete a dungeon room, however. Each instance you begin a fresh level, you're shown a sixteen-square board of boxes. All spaces features a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To explore a room, you just select on one of the four rows, but the exact space you end up on is a matter of probability.

You might see a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You begin with a 25% chance of landing on any given square in a row.

After that, the odds shift. So do you press your luck, or do you opt on a safer line first and aim for more cautious selections early? Herein lies the tension between chance and safety at play in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing after you develop a feel for it.

Shaping the Odds

The meta-layer is that your percentages can be shaped over the course of a session by picking up teeth that modify the types of squares you're drawn toward. For example, you could acquire a perk that will decrease your odds of encountering a trap, but will also decrease the odds of getting a reward too.

• Developing a strategy is about manipulating math optimally to have a higher chance at getting your desired outcome.
• During one attempt, I invested my stat upgrades toward physical attack/defense and picked as many teeth I could that would boost my chances of landing on monsters of that variety.
• On a different attempt, I developed my adventurer around loot caches and combined that with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies every time I opened a chest.

The customization choices are somewhat constrained, but it provides ample to engage with to let you manipulate numbers according to your strategy.

A Persistent Gamble

Unsurprisingly, it's still a game of chance. There remains the risk that you have a likely outcome to hit the desired tile but end up landing a foe that would eliminate your last bit of health. All selections is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you work through a stage and determine if to keep clicking or to proceed to the subsequent stage rather than pushing your luck.

Consumables including explosive devices help cut down the chance, similar to some hero powers. A particular character's signature move, charged after selecting four tiles, allows players to choose a vertical line rather than a horizontal line for that move. If you play your cards right, you can reserve that option for an optimal time to sidestep a dangerous choice. There's a shocking amount of nuance in the basic action of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is still in its preview phase, and it has another update to go before the complete edition is released. An additional hero and a fresh guardian are planned for release by the end of January. The 1.0 release may not be much later, but the game's developers haven't announced a final date yet.

A Parting Recommendation

Regardless of when its 1.0 launch occurs, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I've been completely engrossed with it, uncovering each of little secrets and saving my accumulated currency per attempt to unlock a steady stream of meta progression rewards, featuring new characters and items purchasable while playing. To this day, I have not reached the bottom, and I get the feeling I'll still be pursuing that objective when 1.0 finally hits. Count me in for the complete journey.