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After playing more than 200 recent games this year, I am officially wrapping things up on 2025. My annual roundup is live, and I'm satisfied with the concluding selections, accepting that numerous fantastic releases probably slipped through the cracks. Currently, my only job is to other than unwind, unplug a little, and perhaps take a nice walk in the— oh no, stumbled upon a brilliant title. And just like that, goodbye to my intentions!

A Premature Front-Runner Appears

With my laid-back sessions, often set aside for a handful of quirky titles, I've discovered what might become my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar roguelike for Windows PC that deconstructs a conventional dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of major consequence peril and prize. Take this as an early adopter's heads-up: If you relish in knowing about a game before it's popular, give Sol Cesto a try so you can punch a hole in your wallet for unique titles.

A Tactical Dungeon-Crawling Innovation

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's different from everything I've ever played. The setup is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper in search of the sun, which has disappeared from its world. Mechanically, this results in some familiar roguelike structure. Pick a hero with their own parameters and powers, clear floor after floor of enemies, pick up some passive buffs (in the form of teeth), and defeat a few area guardians. Easy to grasp!

The Novel Gameplay Loop

How you truly navigate a area, though. Every time you start another stage, you see a 4x4 grid of boxes. Each square features a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To proceed, you simply click on one of the four rows, but the exact space you land in is a matter of probability.

You may face a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You start with a one-in-four probability of landing on a particular space in a row.

Subsequently, your chances are recalculated. The question becomes: Do you take the risk, or do you opt on a different row first and attempt some safer moves early? This is the push-your-luck gameplay on display in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing after you develop its rhythm.

Manipulating Probability

The roguelike twist is that your odds can be manipulated during an attempt by gathering teeth that alter which objects you're drawn toward. To illustrate, you could acquire a perk that will decrease your odds of hitting a trap, but will also decrease the odds of landing on a treasure chest too.

• Developing a strategy is about tweaking the numbers optimally to have a improved likelihood at selecting the optimal square.
• During one attempt, I put all my power boosts toward brute force and chose every teeth I could that would increase my odds of being drawn to monsters aligned with that strength.
• On a different attempt, I built my character around loot caches and coupled it with a perk that would debuff nearby foes whenever I claimed a reward.

The customization choices are limited, but it provides ample to experiment with to allow you to tweak probabilities to your preference.

An Ever-Present Risk

Of course, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There's always the risk that you have an 80% chance to hit the desired tile but ultimately choose a monster that would eliminate your last bit of health. Every move is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you clear a floor out and determine if to continue selecting or to advance to the subsequent stage rather than testing fate.

Consumables including destructive ordnance assist in minimizing the chance, similar to some hero powers. A particular character's signature move, powered up by selecting four tiles, enables you to click on a vertical line rather than a horizontal line on a turn. By employing this move wisely, you can reserve that option for the right moment to sidestep a dangerous choice. There's a shocking degree of depth in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is currently in early access, and it has at least one more update scheduled before the full version is launched. An additional hero and a additional end-level foe are scheduled to arrive before the conclusion of January. The 1.0 release may not be long after, but the creators haven't committed to a final date yet.

A Final Thought

Regardless of when the complete game arrives, you should consider put Sol Cesto in your sights. I've been completely engrossed with it, discovering its small details and banking my earned gold per attempt to unlock a steady stream of meta progression rewards, featuring additional heroes and items I can buy mid-attempt. To this day, I have not completed the dungeon, and I suspect I will remain working on that task when 1.0 finally hits. I'm committed for the entire experience.