🔗 Share this article

Following my time with in excess of 200 new releases this year, I am officially wrapping things up on 2025. My year-end list is live, and I'm satisfied with the concluding selections, despite being aware plenty of fantastic releases may have dropped through the cracks. At this point, it's plan is to but sit back, take a short break, and perhaps take a refreshing hike in the— well, shoot, found another great game. There go my intentions!

An Early Contender Emerges

In my more casual gaming time, usually reserved for a selection of unusual games, I've come across what might become my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive roguelike for Windows PC that reimagines a conventional dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of significant risk peril and prize. Consider this a preview for the in-the-know: If you take pride 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 Tactical Dungeon-Crawling Innovation

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's different from everything I'm familiar with. The premise is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, going down level by level in search of the sun, which has disappeared from the fantasy world. When you play, this creates some standard crawl progression. Select a character possessing unique stats and abilities, clear floor after floor of foes, collect some stat improvements (in the form of teeth), and defeat a few stage-ending champions. Easy to grasp!

The Novel Central System

How you truly navigate a dungeon room, though. Every time you begin a fresh level, you see a sixteen-square board of boxes. Each square holds a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To make a move, you simply click on one of the horizontal lines, but which square you land in is up to chance.

You might see a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You start with a one-in-four probability of hitting any given square in a row.

Subsequently, your odds shift. So do you press your luck, or do you opt on a alternative option first and attempt some more cautious selections early? Herein lies the risk-reward dynamic in action in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating once you get its rhythm.

Manipulating Probability

The roguelike twist is that your probabilities can be influenced during an attempt by gathering teeth that alter which objects you're more likely to land on. As an instance, you could acquire a perk that will lower your chances of landing on a trap, but will also decrease the odds of getting a treasure chest too.

• Crafting a loadout is about manipulating math optimally to have a higher chance at landing where you want.
• In one run, I focused my power boosts toward brute force and chose every teeth I could that would increase my odds of attracting me toward monsters of that variety.
• In another run, I constructed my hero around reward boxes and paired that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes whenever I secured loot.

The build options are not endless, but they are sufficient to engage with to let you manipulate probabilities according to your strategy.

A Persistent Tension

Of course, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There's always the chance that you have an 80% chance to land on the preferred space but end up landing on an enemy that would take out your last bit of health. Every move is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you work through a stage and determine if to continue selecting or to advance to the next floor rather than pushing your luck.

Items like explosive devices assist in minimizing the chance, as do some character abilities. An adventurer's special power, activated once selecting four tiles, allows players to choose a vertical line instead of a horizontal line on a turn. Should you use this strategically, you can hold that ability for the right moment to sidestep a dangerous choice. You'll find an astonishing degree of depth in the basic action of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is currently in development, and it has a final update planned until the complete edition is released. Another playable adventurer and a new boss are scheduled to arrive sometime in January. The 1.0 release may not be long after, but the game's developers haven't announced a specific release window yet.

A Parting Endorsement

No matter when the complete game arrives, you should consider put Sol Cesto in your sights. I have been positively obsessed with it, discovering its hidden nuances and storing my run rewards in each run to access a constant flow of persistent upgrades, such as additional heroes and items I can buy mid-attempt. To this day, I have not completed the dungeon, and I get the feeling I'll continue pursuing that objective when the full version launches. I'm committed for the complete journey.