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Following my time with in excess of 200 new releases this year, I'm formally closing the book on 2025. My annual roundup is published, and I feel content with the ultimate rankings, despite being aware plenty of stellar titles may have dropped through the cracks. Now, there's nothing for me to do except relax, take a short break, and possibly go for a refreshing hike in the— well, shoot, found another great game. And just like that, goodbye to my peaceful respite!

A Surprising Contender Emerges

During my casual gaming time, typically earmarked for a handful of quirky titles, I've come across what could be my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar roguelike for Windows PC that reimagines a conventional dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of significant risk risk and reward. Consider this a preview for the in-the-know: If you relish being aware of a game before it's popular, test out Sol Cesto so you can punch a hole in your gaming budget.

A Tactical Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's a departure from all I've ever played. The premise is that you need to explore a dungeon, descending floor after floor to find the sun, which has gone missing from this mythical realm. Mechanically, that makes for some recognizable genre framework. Select a character possessing unique attributes and skills, fight through each level of monsters, collect some stat improvements (which are teeth), and vanquish a few biome bosses. Easy to grasp!

The Unique Core Mechanic

The way you effectively complete a dungeon room, though. Every time you start another stage, you see a four-by-four matrix of boxes. Each square holds a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To make a move, you choose on one of the four rows, but the exact space you end up on is up to chance.

You might see a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You initially will have a 25% chance of hitting any given square in a row.

After that, the probabilities change. So do you go for it, or do you choose on a different row first and attempt some more cautious selections early? This is the risk-reward dynamic at play in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing after you develop a feel for it.

Manipulating Probability

The roguelike twist is that your percentages can be shaped over the course of a session by picking up teeth that alter which objects you're more attracted to. To illustrate, you might get a perk that will decrease your odds of landing on a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of getting a reward too.

• Developing a strategy is about manipulating math as best you can to have a higher chance at landing where you want.
• During one attempt, I invested my stat upgrades toward melee prowess and selected all the teeth possible that would increase my odds of being drawn to monsters aligned with that strength.
• On a different attempt, I constructed my hero around loot caches and combined that with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters whenever I opened a chest.

The strategic possibilities are not endless, but they are sufficient to experiment with to allow you to tweak probabilities according to your strategy.

A Persistent Risk

Of course, it remains a game of chance. You constantly face the risk that you have a likely outcome 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 you feel ongoing pressure as you work through a stage and determine if to press onward or when to move on to the next floor rather than risking it all.

Items like explosive devices help cut down the chance, just like some character abilities. A particular character's signature move, activated once clearing four squares, enables you to choose a column in place of a horizontal line on a turn. If you play your cards right, you can save that move for the right moment to avoid a risky decision. There's a shocking level of strategy in the simple act of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is still in development, and it has at least one more update planned before the final game is unleashed. An additional hero and a additional end-level foe are planned for release before the conclusion of January. The 1.0 release may not be long after, but the game's developers haven't set a concrete launch day yet.

A Parting Recommendation

No matter when its 1.0 launch occurs, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I've been thoroughly captivated with it, finding all of small details and saving my accumulated currency every session to access a constant flow of permanent unlocks, featuring fresh adventurers and items available for acquisition while playing. As of now, I am yet to found the deepest level, and I have a sense I will remain attempting that goal when the official release drops. Count me in for the complete journey.