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Having experienced more than 200 new releases this year, I am officially turning the page on 2025. My annual roundup is out in the world, and I am at peace with the final results, accepting that plenty of stellar titles likely fell by the wayside. Currently, my only plan is to except relax, take a short break, and maybe enjoy a pleasant stroll in the— ah crap, found another brilliant title. And just like that, goodbye to my plans!

A Premature Contender Emerges

In my more casual gaming time, typically earmarked for a handful of quirky titles, I've discovered what might become my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual roguelike for Windows PC that breaks down a traditional dungeon crawler into a luck-based game of significant risk risk and reward. Take this as a hipster's insider tip: If you relish discovering a game before it's popular, test out Sol Cesto so you can punch a hole in your indie credit card.

A Tactical Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's a departure from all I've previously experienced. The setup is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, descending floor after floor on a quest for the sun, which has disappeared from the fantasy world. Mechanically, this creates some familiar roguelike structure. Pick a hero who has parameters and powers, defeat enemies on every stage of enemies, collect some passive buffs (in the form of teeth), and overcome a few stage-ending champions. Simple enough!

The Unique Central System

The way you truly navigate a area, though. Every time you begin a fresh level, the game presents a 4x4 grid of boxes. All spaces either contains a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To explore a room, you just select on one of the four rows, but the specific tile you land in is a matter of probability.

You may face a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You initially will have a quarter likelihood of selecting a specific tile in a row.

Subsequently, your probabilities change. So do you go for it, or do you opt on a alternative option first and attempt some less risky choices early? That's the push-your-luck gameplay on display in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing when you acquire an understanding of it.

Shaping the Odds

The roguelike twist is that your odds can be manipulated over the course of a session by collecting teeth that change what things you're more attracted to. For example, you may obtain a perk that will reduce the probability of encountering a trap, but will also decrease the odds of finding a treasure chest too.

• Creating a build is about influencing the statistics as best you can to have a improved likelihood at getting your desired outcome.
• On a particular session, I put all my power boosts toward melee prowess and selected all the teeth I could that would boost my chances of being drawn to monsters of that variety.
• During a separate session, I built my character around treasure chests and combined that with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters every time I secured loot.

The customization choices are somewhat constrained, but they are sufficient to experiment with to enable you to influence probabilities according to your strategy.

A Constant Risk

Unsurprisingly, it remains a game of chance. You constantly face the chance that you have a high probability to select the preferred space but end up landing on an enemy 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 when to move on to the following level as opposed to risking it all.

Items like destructive ordnance assist in minimizing the chance, as do some character abilities. A particular character's unique ability, charged after selecting four tiles, lets gamers to select a vertical line in place of a row during that action. By employing your cards right, you can reserve that option for the right moment to circumvent a perilous selection. You'll find an astonishing level of strategy in the simple act of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is currently in its preview phase, and it has at least one more update planned before the complete edition is released. Another playable adventurer and a new boss are scheduled to arrive by the end of January. The official version may not be much later, but the game's developers haven't set a final date yet.

A Final Endorsement

Regardless of when its 1.0 launch occurs, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I have been thoroughly captivated with it, finding all of little secrets and saving my accumulated currency every session to access a constant flow of meta progression rewards, such as fresh adventurers and items available for acquisition mid-attempt. To this day, I have not reached the bottom, and I get the feeling I'll still be working on that task when 1.0 finally hits. I'm committed for the entire experience.