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Having experienced well over 200 new releases this year, I'm formally closing the book on 2025. My best-of compilation is live, and I am at peace with the final results, even knowing a host of stellar titles likely fell by the wayside. At this point, it's job is to other than unwind, unplug a little, and maybe enjoy a pleasant stroll in the— ah crap, found another brilliant title. And just like that, goodbye to my peaceful respite!

A Surprising Contender Emerges

During my off-hours play, typically earmarked for a selection of unusual games, I've encountered what could be my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar roguelike for Windows PC that deconstructs a classic dungeon crawler into a probability-fueled game of major consequence danger and payoff. Take this as a hipster's insider tip: If you relish in knowing about a game before it's popular, give Sol Cesto a try so you can burn a spot in your indie credit card.

A Tactical Dungeon-Crawling Innovation

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's unlike anything I've ever played. The concept is that you need to explore a dungeon, descending floor after floor in search of the sun, which has disappeared from its world. Mechanically, this results in some recognizable genre framework. Choose an adventurer possessing unique attributes and skills, defeat enemies on every stage of foes, collect some stat improvements (in the form of teeth), and overcome a few stage-ending champions. Simple enough!

The Distinctive Central System

How you truly navigate a chamber, is unique. Each instance you begin a fresh level, you see a sixteen-square board of boxes. All spaces holds a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To explore a room, you simply click on one of the four rows, but which square you end up on 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 quarter likelihood of hitting a particular space in a row.

Then, you'll chances are recalculated. So do you press your luck, or do you opt on a different row first and aim for less risky choices early? This is the risk-reward dynamic at play in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating after you develop an understanding of it.

Influencing Chance

The procedural hook is that your odds can be manipulated over the course of a session by picking up teeth that modify the types of squares you're drawn toward. For example, you might get a perk that will decrease your odds of encountering a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of finding a reward too.

• Developing a strategy is about influencing the statistics as best you can to have a improved likelihood at selecting the optimal square.
• During one attempt, I put all my attribute improvements toward melee prowess and chose every teeth I could that would boost my chances of being drawn to monsters aligned with that strength.
• On a different attempt, I developed my adventurer around treasure chests and combined that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes each time I claimed a reward.

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

An Ever-Present Tension

Naturally, it remains a game of chance. There's always the possibility that you have a high probability to select the desired tile but ultimately choose a monster that would eliminate your final hit point. All selections is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you work through a stage and choose whether to continue selecting or to advance to the next floor instead of risking it all.

Consumables including enemy-killing bombs aid in reducing the chance, similar to some hero powers. An adventurer's signature move, charged after selecting four tiles, enables you to choose a vertical column in place of a horizontal line on a turn. Should you use this move wisely, you can reserve that option for an optimal time to circumvent a perilous selection. You'll find an astonishing amount of nuance in the basic action of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is currently in development, and it has another update to go before the final game is unleashed. Another playable adventurer and a additional end-level foe are scheduled to arrive sometime in January. The 1.0 release may not be far behind, but the studio haven't set a specific release window yet.

A Parting Thought

Whenever the complete game arrives, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your radar. For the past week, I've been completely engrossed with it, discovering its hidden nuances and banking my earned gold per attempt to access a constant flow of meta progression rewards, including new characters and items I can buy while playing. I still haven't completed the dungeon, and I suspect I will remain attempting that goal when the official release drops. I'm committed for the entire experience.