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After playing well over 200 new releases this year, It's time to wrapping things up on 2025. My year-end list is live, and I feel content with the final results, accepting that plenty of stellar titles likely fell by the wayside. Currently, my only job is to except relax, take a short break, and possibly go for a refreshing hike in the— oh no, found another brilliant title. And just like that, goodbye to my intentions!

An Early Contender Emerges

With my laid-back sessions, usually reserved for a few oddball curiosities, I've come across potentially my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive roguelike for Windows PC that reimagines a classic dungeon crawler into a probability-fueled game of major consequence peril and prize. Take this as a hipster's insider tip: If you take pride discovering a game before it's popular, sample Sol Cesto so you can burn a spot in your gaming budget.

A Tactical Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's unlike anything I've ever played. The setup is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, descending floor after floor in search of the sun, which has vanished from its world. In practice, that makes for some recognizable genre framework. Pick a hero who has attributes and skills, clear floor after floor of enemies, acquire some permanent upgrades (represented as teeth), and vanquish a few area guardians. Easy to grasp!

The Unique Gameplay Loop

The way you actually clear a dungeon room, though. Whenever you enter a new floor, the game presents a sixteen-square board of boxes. Each square either contains a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To explore a room, you just select on one of the four rows, but the specific tile you land in is determined by luck.

You could encounter a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You begin with a one-in-four probability of selecting a specific tile in a row.

After that, the odds shift. The question becomes: Do you go for it, or do you opt on a alternative option first and try to make less risky choices early? This is the tension between chance and safety on display in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing after you develop a feel for it.

Influencing Chance

The roguelike twist is that your odds can be manipulated over the course of a session by gathering teeth that alter which objects you're more attracted to. As an instance, you may obtain a perk that will lower your chances of encountering a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of landing on a treasure chest too.

• Developing a strategy is about influencing the statistics optimally to have a improved likelihood at selecting the optimal square.
• On a particular session, I focused my stat upgrades toward melee prowess and selected all the teeth I could that would increase my odds of attracting me toward monsters of that variety.
• On a different attempt, I developed my adventurer around loot caches and paired that with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies each time I opened a chest.

The build options are not endless, but there's enough to work with to let you manipulate the odds according to your strategy.

A Constant Gamble

Unsurprisingly, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There's always the chance that you have an 80% chance to hit the preferred space but wind up hitting on an enemy that would eliminate your last bit of health. All selections is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you navigate a level and decide when to continue selecting or to advance to the subsequent stage instead of pushing your luck.

Tools such as explosive devices help cut down the chance, as do some special skills. A particular character's unique ability, activated once clearing four squares, allows players to click on a vertical line in place of a horizontal row during that action. By employing this move wisely, you can hold that ability for an optimal time to circumvent a perilous selection. You'll find an astonishing amount of nuance in the simple act of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is still in its preview phase, and it has a final update scheduled before the full version is launched. Another playable adventurer and a fresh guardian are scheduled to arrive before the conclusion of January. The official version likely won't be far behind, but the creators haven't set a specific release window yet.

A Parting Recommendation

No matter when it's fully released, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your radar. I have been completely engrossed with it, discovering its hidden nuances and storing my run rewards every session to unlock a steady stream of meta progression rewards, including additional heroes and items I can buy while playing. I still haven't completed the dungeon, and I suspect I'll still be working on that task when the full version launches. I'm committed for the entire experience.