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Having experienced more than 200 fresh titles this year, I am officially turning the page on 2025. My year-end list is live, and I am at peace with the concluding selections, accepting that plenty of stellar titles may have dropped by the wayside. Now, there's job is to but sit back, disconnect briefly, and maybe enjoy a nice walk in the— well, shoot, found another amazing experience. So much for my intentions!

A Premature Contender Emerges

During my laid-back sessions, typically earmarked for a few oddball curiosities, I've come across what could be my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive roguelike for Windows PC that deconstructs a traditional labyrinth explorer into a luck-based game of high stakes danger and payoff. Take this as a preview for the in-the-know: If you relish discovering a game before it's cool, test out Sol Cesto so you can burn a spot in your gaming budget.

A Strategic Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's a departure from all I've previously experienced. The premise is that you must venture into a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper on a quest for the sun, which has gone missing from its world. When you play, this results in some familiar roguelike structure. Choose an adventurer who has stats and abilities, fight through each level of monsters, collect some passive buffs (which are teeth), and overcome a few stage-ending champions. Simple enough!

The Distinctive Gameplay Loop

The way you actually clear a dungeon room, is unique. Whenever you begin a fresh level, you're shown a four-by-four matrix of boxes. Every tile features a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To explore a room, you choose on one of the four rows, but the specific tile you land in is up to chance.

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

Then, you'll odds shift. The question becomes: Do you take the risk, or do you opt on a different row first and try to make safer moves early? Herein lies the push-your-luck gameplay on display in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating once you get its rhythm.

Manipulating Probability

The procedural hook is that your odds can be manipulated during an attempt by gathering teeth that modify the types of squares you're more attracted to. For example, you may obtain a perk that will lower your chances of hitting a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of landing on a treasure chest too.

• Developing a strategy is about manipulating math as best you can to have a higher chance at selecting the optimal square.
• In one run, I focused my stat upgrades toward physical attack/defense and picked as many teeth I could that would increase my odds of attracting me toward monsters of that variety.
• On a different attempt, I built my character around treasure chests and paired that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes whenever I secured loot.

The strategic possibilities are not endless, but there's enough to engage with to enable you to influence numbers the way you want.

A Constant Tension

Of course, it's still a game of chance. You constantly face the possibility that you have an 80% chance to land on the desired tile but end up landing a monster that would take out your last bit of health. All selections is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you work through a stage and decide when to press onward or to proceed to the subsequent stage as opposed to risking it all.

Tools such as enemy-killing bombs assist in minimizing the chance, similar to some character abilities. An adventurer's signature move, activated once making four moves, enables you to click on a column rather than a horizontal row during that action. By employing this move wisely, you can save that move for the right moment to avoid a risky decision. It's a surprising amount of nuance in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is remaining in development, and it has another update to go before the full version is launched. An additional hero and a fresh guardian are planned for release sometime in January. The official version probably isn't far behind, but the creators haven't set a final date yet.

A Concluding Thought

Whenever its 1.0 launch occurs, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your radar. I have been completely engrossed with it, discovering its hidden nuances and storing my run rewards per attempt to unlock a steady stream of meta progression rewards, including new characters and items purchasable while playing. I still haven't completed the dungeon, and I have a sense I'll still be working on that task when 1.0 finally hits. Count me in for the entire experience.