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Having experienced more than 200 recent games this year, It's time to wrapping things up on 2025. My annual roundup is live, and I feel content with the ultimate rankings, accepting that numerous fantastic releases may have dropped under the radar. Currently, my only job is to other than unwind, disconnect briefly, and perhaps take a nice walk in the— ah crap, discovered one more amazing experience. There go my intentions!

A Surprising Favorite Surfaces

In my more off-hours play, typically earmarked for a handful of quirky titles, I've discovered what might become my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive roguelike for Windows PC that deconstructs a traditional labyrinth explorer into a chance-driven game of major consequence danger and payoff. Take this as a hipster's insider tip: If you take pride being aware of a game before it hits the mainstream, sample Sol Cesto so you can burn a spot in your wallet for unique titles.

A Strategic Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's a departure from all I've ever played. The concept is that you need to explore a dungeon, descending floor after floor on a quest for the sun, which has disappeared from its world. When you play, this creates some familiar roguelike structure. Choose an adventurer possessing unique attributes and skills, clear floor after floor of enemies, pick up some passive buffs (represented as teeth), and defeat a few area guardians. Straightforward, right!

The Novel Core Mechanic

The method by which you truly navigate a dungeon room, however. Every time you enter a new floor, you see a sixteen-square board of boxes. Each square either contains a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To make a move, you just select on one of the four rows, but which square you land in is determined by luck.

You could encounter a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You begin with a quarter likelihood of hitting any given square in a row.

After that, the odds shift. So do you take the risk, or do you opt on a safer line first and aim for safer moves early? That's the tension between chance and safety in action in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating after you develop a feel for it.

Influencing Chance

The procedural hook is that your percentages can be shaped during an attempt by picking up teeth that alter which objects you're drawn toward. To illustrate, you could acquire a perk that will reduce the probability of landing on a trap, but will also decrease the odds of landing on a treasure chest too.

• Crafting a loadout is about influencing the statistics to the utmost to have a higher chance at getting your desired outcome.
• On a particular session, I focused my stat upgrades toward physical attack/defense and selected all the teeth possible that would improve my probability of landing on monsters with that damage type.
• On a different attempt, I developed my adventurer around treasure chests and coupled it with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies whenever I opened a chest.

The strategic possibilities are limited, but there's enough to experiment with to let you manipulate numbers to your preference.

A Constant Gamble

Unsurprisingly, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There's always the possibility that you have an 80% chance to land on the desired tile but wind up hitting on an enemy that would deplete your final hit point. Every move is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you navigate a level and decide when to press onward or when to move on to the next floor instead of pushing your luck.

Items like explosive devices aid in reducing the chance, just like some hero powers. One hero's signature move, charged after clearing four squares, allows players to click on a vertical line instead of a row on a turn. If you play this move wisely, you can hold that ability for an optimal time to circumvent a perilous selection. There's a shocking amount of nuance in the basic action of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is remaining in early access, and it has another update planned before the final game is unleashed. Another playable adventurer and a additional end-level foe are expected to drop before the conclusion of January. The official version probably isn't much later, but the studio haven't committed to a concrete launch day yet.

A Concluding Recommendation

Whenever its 1.0 launch occurs, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I've been thoroughly captivated with it, uncovering each of little secrets and banking my earned gold in each run to unlock a steady stream of persistent upgrades, including fresh adventurers and items available for acquisition mid-attempt. As of now, I am yet to completed the dungeon, and I have a sense I will remain attempting that goal when the full version launches. Sign me up for the long haul.