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After playing more than 200 fresh titles this year, I'm formally closing the book on 2025. My year-end list is out in the world, and I am at peace with the concluding selections, accepting that numerous excellent games may have dropped through the cracks. Now, there's job is to except relax, disconnect briefly, and possibly go for a nice walk in the— oh no, discovered one more brilliant title. There go my intentions!

A Premature Front-Runner Appears

With my laid-back sessions, usually reserved for a selection of unusual games, I've encountered what could be my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual roguelike for Windows PC that reimagines a conventional dungeon crawler into a luck-based game of major consequence risk and reward. Take this as a preview for the in-the-know: If you relish 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 Tactical Dungeon-Crawling Innovation

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's a departure from all I'm familiar with. The premise is that you must venture into a dungeon, going down level by level in search of the sun, which has disappeared from the fantasy world. When you play, this results in some standard crawl progression. Pick a hero who has parameters and powers, clear floor after floor of enemies, collect some stat improvements (in the form of teeth), and defeat a few area guardians. Simple enough!

The Novel Central System

The method by which you truly navigate a chamber, though. Each instance you start another stage, you see a 4x4 grid of boxes. Each square features a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To proceed, you choose on one of the four rows, but the specific tile you end up on is up to chance.

You may face a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You begin with a 25% chance of selecting a particular space in a row.

Then, you'll chances are recalculated. So do you take the risk, or do you choose on a different row first and attempt some less risky choices early? Herein lies the tension between chance and safety on display in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing after you develop a feel for it.

Influencing Chance

The meta-layer is that your probabilities can be influenced over the course of a session by gathering teeth that change what things you're drawn toward. As an instance, you might get a perk that will reduce the probability of hitting a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of getting a treasure chest too.

• Creating a build is about manipulating math optimally to have a improved likelihood at landing where you want.
• In one run, I focused my stat upgrades toward brute force and picked as many teeth possible that would increase my odds of attracting me toward monsters aligned with that strength.
• On a different attempt, I built my character around reward boxes and paired that with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies whenever I opened a chest.

The build options are not endless, but it provides ample to experiment with to let you manipulate probabilities according to your strategy.

An Ever-Present Tension

Of course, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There remains the chance that you have a likely outcome to land on the desired tile but ultimately choose a foe that would deplete your last bit of health. Every move is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you work through a stage and determine if to keep clicking or when to move on to the subsequent stage instead of pushing your luck.

Tools such as enemy-killing bombs aid in reducing the chance, similar to some hero powers. One hero's unique ability, activated once making four moves, enables you to choose a column in place of a row for that move. Should you use this move wisely, you can reserve that option for the right moment to sidestep a dangerous choice. It's a surprising degree of depth in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is remaining in its preview phase, and it has another update planned before the final game is released. Another playable adventurer and a new boss are planned for release before the conclusion of January. The full launch probably isn't long after, but the creators haven't announced a specific release window yet.

A Concluding Recommendation

Whenever it's fully released, you should consider put Sol Cesto on your radar. I've been thoroughly captivated with it, finding all of hidden nuances and storing my run rewards per attempt to access a constant flow of persistent upgrades, such as new characters and items purchasable while playing. I still haven't completed the dungeon, and I suspect I will remain pursuing that objective when 1.0 finally hits. I'm committed for the complete journey.