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Having experienced in excess of 200 recent games this year, It's time to closing the book on 2025. My annual roundup is live, and I'm satisfied with the concluding selections, even knowing plenty of excellent games likely fell by the wayside. Currently, my only job is to but sit back, take a short break, and maybe enjoy a nice walk in the— ah crap, stumbled upon a brilliant title. There go my peaceful respite!

An Early Contender Emerges

In my more laid-back sessions, often set aside for a selection of unusual games, I've discovered what could be my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual roguelike for Windows PC that reimagines a traditional dungeon crawler into a probability-fueled game of significant risk peril and prize. Take this as a hipster's insider tip: If you take pride discovering a game before it's cool, sample Sol Cesto so you can burn a spot in your indie credit card.

A Tactical Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's a departure from all I've previously experienced. The premise is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper in search of the sun, which has disappeared from this mythical realm. In practice, this results in some familiar roguelike structure. Pick a hero possessing unique attributes and skills, defeat enemies on every stage of monsters, pick up some passive buffs (represented as teeth), and vanquish a few stage-ending champions. Easy to grasp!

The Distinctive Gameplay Loop

The way you effectively complete a chamber, though. Each instance you enter a new floor, the game presents a four-by-four matrix of boxes. Each square either contains a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To explore a room, you simply click on one of the four rows, but the exact space you end up on is determined by luck.

You might see a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You initially will have a 25% chance of hitting a specific tile in a row.

Then, you'll probabilities change. The question becomes: Do you go for it, or do you choose on a alternative option first and attempt some more cautious selections early? That's the risk-reward dynamic in action in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating when you acquire an understanding of it.

Influencing Chance

The procedural hook is that your odds can be manipulated through a run by picking up teeth that alter which objects you're more attracted to. To illustrate, you may obtain a perk that will decrease your odds of hitting a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of getting a treasure chest too.

• Crafting a loadout is about tweaking the numbers optimally to have a improved likelihood at selecting the optimal square.
• During one attempt, I focused my attribute improvements toward physical attack/defense and chose every teeth possible that would improve my probability of attracting me toward monsters with that damage type.
• On a different attempt, I developed my adventurer around loot caches and combined that with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies whenever I opened a chest.

The customization choices are somewhat constrained, but there's enough to experiment with to let you manipulate the odds to your preference.

A Persistent Gamble

Of course, it's still a game of chance. You constantly face the chance that you have a likely outcome to hit the desired tile but ultimately choose on an enemy that would deplete your last bit of health. Each click is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you navigate a level and decide when to press onward or when to move on to the following level instead of testing fate.

Consumables including enemy-killing bombs aid in reducing the chance, just like some special skills. A particular character's special power, activated once selecting four tiles, lets gamers to select a column rather than a horizontal line for that move. Should you use this strategically, you can save that move for an optimal time to circumvent a perilous selection. It's a surprising level of strategy in the simple act of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is currently in early access, and it has at least one more update scheduled until the full version is unleashed. Another playable adventurer and a fresh guardian are scheduled to arrive sometime in January. The official version probably isn't far behind, but the creators haven't set a specific release window yet.

A Parting Recommendation

No matter when the complete game arrives, you ought to put Sol Cesto in your sights. I've been completely engrossed with it, discovering its small details and saving my accumulated currency in each run to unlock a steady stream of meta progression rewards, including additional heroes and items purchasable during a run. As of now, I am yet to completed the dungeon, and I suspect I will remain pursuing that objective when the full version launches. Count me in for the long haul.