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Following my time with well over 200 fresh titles this year, It's time to closing the book on 2025. My best-of compilation is live, and I'm satisfied with the concluding selections, accepting that numerous stellar titles likely fell by the wayside. Now, there's job is to except relax, disconnect briefly, and perhaps take a refreshing hike in the— oh no, discovered one more great game. So much for my plans!

An Early Front-Runner Appears

In my more casual gaming time, often set aside for a handful of quirky titles, I've come across what could be my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that reimagines a conventional labyrinth explorer into a probability-fueled game of major consequence danger and payoff. Take this as an early adopter's heads-up: If you take pride discovering a game before it's popular, test out Sol Cesto so you can make a dent in your gaming budget.

A Strategic Dungeon-Crawling Innovation

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's a departure from all I've previously experienced. The premise is that you need to explore a dungeon, descending floor after floor in search of the sun, which has disappeared from this mythical realm. When you play, that makes for some familiar roguelike structure. Choose an adventurer who has parameters and powers, defeat enemies on every stage of monsters, pick up some passive buffs (in the form of teeth), and overcome a few area guardians. Straightforward, right!

The Novel Gameplay Loop

The way you truly navigate a area, however. Every time you enter a new floor, you see a four-by-four matrix of boxes. Each square either contains a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To make a move, you simply click on one of the four rows, but the specific tile you select is up to chance.

You might see a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You begin with a one-in-four probability of hitting a particular space in a row.

After that, the chances are recalculated. The question becomes: Do you take the risk, or do you click on a different row first and aim for safer moves early? Herein lies the risk-reward dynamic in action in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating once you get a feel for it.

Influencing Chance

The roguelike twist is that your probabilities can be influenced over the course of a session by gathering teeth that change what things you're drawn toward. For example, you might get a perk that will decrease your odds of encountering a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of landing on a treasure chest too.

• Developing a strategy is about manipulating math as best you can to have a better shot at selecting the optimal square.
• In one run, I put all my attribute improvements toward melee prowess and picked as many teeth I could that would boost my chances of attracting me toward monsters of that variety.
• In another run, I built my character around reward boxes and combined that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes every time I opened a chest.

The customization choices are limited, but it provides ample to experiment with to let you manipulate numbers to your preference.

An Ever-Present Risk

Unsurprisingly, it's still a game of chance. There remains the risk that you have a high probability to hit the desired tile but wind up hitting a monster that would take out your final hit point. Each click is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you clear a floor out and decide when to press onward or when to move on to the subsequent stage instead of testing fate.

Tools such as enemy-killing bombs help cut down the chance, as do some character abilities. A particular character's signature move, powered up by clearing four squares, enables you to select a vertical column instead of a horizontal row for that move. By employing your cards right, you can save that move for a crucial point to avoid a risky decision. It's a surprising level of strategy in the simple act of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is still in early access, and it has a final update scheduled before the full version is unleashed. A new character and a new boss are expected to drop sometime in January. The official version probably isn't much later, but the creators haven't set a final date yet.

A Final Thought

Whenever the complete game arrives, 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 per attempt to access a constant flow of permanent unlocks, including new characters and items I can buy during a run. To this day, I have not completed the dungeon, and I get the feeling I will remain attempting that goal when the official release drops. Count me in for the complete journey.