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After playing in excess of 200 fresh titles this year, I'm formally turning the page on 2025. My year-end list is out in the world, and I'm satisfied with the concluding selections, despite being aware a host of excellent games probably slipped by the wayside. At this point, it's nothing for me to do except relax, unplug a little, and perhaps take a nice walk in the— well, shoot, found another amazing experience. So much for my plans!

An Early Favorite Surfaces

During my off-hours play, typically earmarked for a few oddball curiosities, I've encountered what might become my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a traditional dungeon crawler into a luck-based game of high stakes risk and reward. Consider this an early adopter's heads-up: If you take pride being aware of a game before it hits the mainstream, give Sol Cesto a try so you can punch a hole in your gaming budget.

A Strategic Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's a departure from all I've ever played. The setup is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, going down level by level on a quest for the sun, which has vanished from its world. Mechanically, that makes for some recognizable genre framework. Pick a hero possessing unique parameters and powers, fight through each level of enemies, pick up some passive buffs (represented as teeth), and overcome a few area guardians. Straightforward, right!

The Distinctive Core Mechanic

How you effectively complete a chamber, however. Whenever you enter a new floor, you're shown a four-by-four matrix of boxes. All spaces features a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To proceed, you simply click on one of the horizontal lines, but the specific tile you land in is determined by luck.

You could encounter a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You initially will have a quarter likelihood of hitting a particular space in a row.

Subsequently, your chances are recalculated. The question becomes: Do you go for it, or do you opt on a safer line first and aim for less risky choices early? That's the tension between chance and safety in action in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing once you get a feel for it.

Shaping the Odds

The roguelike twist is that your percentages can be shaped during an attempt by collecting teeth that change what things you're more attracted to. To illustrate, you might get a perk that will lower your chances of encountering a trap, but will also decrease the odds of landing on a reward too.

• Developing a strategy is about manipulating math to the utmost to have a higher chance at getting your desired outcome.
• During one attempt, I put all my attribute improvements toward melee prowess and chose every teeth possible that would increase my odds of being drawn to monsters aligned with that strength.
• During a separate session, I built my character around treasure chests and combined that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes every time I claimed a reward.

The strategic possibilities are limited, but it provides ample to engage with to let you manipulate the odds the way you want.

A Persistent Risk

Unsurprisingly, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There remains the risk that you have a likely outcome to land on the desired tile but wind up hitting a monster that would eliminate your last bit of health. Every move is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you work through a stage and decide when to press onward or when to move on to the subsequent stage as opposed to testing fate.

Tools such as enemy-killing bombs assist in minimizing the chance, as do some hero powers. An adventurer's special power, activated once making four moves, allows players to click on a vertical line rather than a horizontal row during that action. By employing this strategically, you can save that move for a crucial point to avoid a risky decision. It's a surprising amount of nuance in the basic action of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is still in development, and it has another update to go until the full version is launched. An additional hero and a fresh guardian are expected to drop by the end of January. The full launch likely won't be long after, but the creators haven't committed to a specific release window yet.

A Concluding Thought

Regardless of when it's fully released, you should consider put Sol Cesto on your radar. For the past week, I've been completely engrossed with it, discovering its little secrets and storing my run rewards per attempt to access a constant flow of meta progression rewards, such as additional heroes and items I can buy during a run. As of now, I am yet to completed the dungeon, and I get the feeling I'll still be attempting that goal when the official release drops. I'm committed for the long haul.