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After playing well over 200 new releases this year, It's time to turning the page on 2025. My best-of compilation is out in the world, and I'm satisfied with the final results, despite being aware numerous fantastic releases probably slipped under the radar. Now, there's nothing for me to do other than unwind, disconnect briefly, and perhaps take a pleasant stroll in the— ah crap, found another great game. There go my plans!

A Surprising Front-Runner Appears

In my more casual gaming time, often set aside for a few oddball curiosities, I've come across what could be my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that deconstructs a conventional dungeon crawler into a luck-based game of major consequence peril and prize. Consider this a hipster's insider tip: If you relish in knowing about a game before it hits the mainstream, give Sol Cesto a try so you can punch a hole in your wallet for unique titles.

A Calculated Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's unlike anything I've previously experienced. The concept is that you must venture into a dungeon, descending floor after floor to find the sun, which has gone missing from the fantasy world. In practice, this creates some familiar roguelike structure. Select a character who has stats and abilities, fight through each level of enemies, pick up some permanent upgrades (represented as teeth), and defeat a few biome bosses. Easy to grasp!

The Distinctive Central System

How you effectively complete a area, however. Every time you start another stage, the game presents a sixteen-square board of boxes. Every tile 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 the exact space you select is a matter of probability.

You may face a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You start with a 25% chance of hitting a particular space in a row.

Subsequently, your probabilities change. So do you press your luck, or do you click on a safer line first and try to make more cautious selections early? Herein lies the push-your-luck gameplay on display in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing when you acquire a feel for it.

Influencing Chance

The meta-layer is that your percentages can be shaped through a run by picking up teeth that modify the types of squares you're more attracted to. To illustrate, you may obtain a perk that will decrease your odds of hitting a trap, but will also decrease the odds of getting a reward too.

• Crafting a loadout is about tweaking the numbers as best you can to have a higher chance at selecting the optimal square.
• On a particular session, I invested my stat upgrades toward melee prowess and picked as many teeth possible that would improve my probability of attracting me toward monsters with that damage type.
• In another run, I constructed my hero around treasure chests and combined that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes every time I claimed a reward.

The strategic possibilities are somewhat constrained, but they are sufficient to work with to enable you to influence probabilities according to your strategy.

A Persistent Gamble

Of course, it remains a game of chance. There remains the possibility that you have a likely outcome to select the square you want but end up landing a foe that would take out your last bit of health. All selections is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you clear a floor out and decide when to continue selecting or to proceed to the next floor as opposed to risking it all.

Consumables including explosive devices assist in minimizing the chance, similar to some character abilities. A particular character's signature move, activated once selecting four tiles, allows players to click on a column instead of a row on a turn. By employing this move wisely, you can reserve that option for the right moment to avoid a risky decision. It's a surprising level of strategy in the simple act of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is still in early access, and it has another update planned until the final game is unleashed. An additional hero and a fresh guardian are expected to drop by the end of January. The full launch may not be far behind, but the studio haven't set a final date yet.

A Parting Thought

No matter when the complete game arrives, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. For the past week, I've been thoroughly captivated with it, uncovering each of hidden nuances and saving my accumulated currency per attempt to reveal a continuous trickle of permanent unlocks, featuring additional heroes and items available for acquisition while playing. I still haven't found the deepest level, and I get the feeling I will remain pursuing that objective when the official release drops. I'm committed for the long haul.