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Following my time with more than 200 recent games this year, I am officially wrapping things up on 2025. My best-of compilation is published, and I feel content with the concluding selections, even knowing a host of stellar titles may have dropped through the cracks. Now, there's plan is to other than unwind, take a short break, and maybe enjoy a pleasant stroll in the— oh no, discovered one more great game. And just like that, goodbye to my plans!

A Premature Favorite Surfaces

With my off-hours play, often set aside for a few oddball curiosities, I've come across potentially my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive roguelike for Windows PC that deconstructs a traditional labyrinth explorer into a chance-driven game of major consequence peril and prize. Take this as a hipster's insider tip: If you enjoy being aware of a game before it hits the mainstream, give Sol Cesto a try so you can punch a hole in your indie credit card.

A Calculated Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's different from everything I've previously experienced. The setup is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, going down level by level to find the sun, which has vanished from this mythical realm. In practice, this creates some familiar roguelike structure. Pick a hero who has parameters and powers, defeat enemies on every stage of monsters, collect some permanent upgrades (which are teeth), and defeat a few stage-ending champions. Easy to grasp!

The Distinctive Gameplay Loop

The way you truly navigate a dungeon room, is unique. Whenever you enter a new floor, you're shown a sixteen-square board of boxes. Each square either contains a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To explore a room, you simply click on one of the horizontal lines, 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 start with a one-in-four probability of hitting a particular space in a row.

After that, the probabilities change. The question becomes: Do you go for it, or do you click on a different row first and aim for more cautious selections early? Herein lies the push-your-luck gameplay on display in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing when you acquire its rhythm.

Influencing Chance

The procedural hook is that your probabilities can be influenced over the course of a session by collecting teeth that alter which objects you're drawn toward. For example, you may obtain a perk that will reduce the probability of encountering a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of landing on a treasure chest too.

• Creating a build is about manipulating math optimally to have a better shot at selecting the optimal square.
• In one run, I put all my power boosts toward physical attack/defense and chose every teeth possible that would boost my chances of being drawn to monsters aligned with that strength.
• On a different attempt, I built my character around treasure chests and coupled it with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters each time I secured loot.

The customization choices are limited, but it provides ample to work with to enable you to influence probabilities to your preference.

A Constant Tension

Of course, it remains a game of chance. There's always the risk that you have a high probability to select the desired tile but end up landing a monster that would eliminate your final hit point. All selections is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you clear a floor out and determine if to keep clicking or when to move on to the following level instead of testing fate.

Tools such as enemy-killing bombs assist in minimizing the chance, just like some character abilities. An adventurer's signature move, activated once clearing four squares, lets gamers to choose a column in place of a row on a turn. Should you use this move wisely, you can save that move for an optimal time to circumvent a perilous selection. You'll find an astonishing degree of depth in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is still in early access, and it has a final update scheduled until the complete edition is unleashed. An additional hero and a fresh guardian are planned for release before the conclusion of January. The full launch probably isn't far behind, but the creators haven't announced a concrete launch day yet.

A Final Endorsement

Regardless of when its 1.0 launch occurs, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I have been thoroughly captivated with it, discovering its little secrets and storing my run rewards per attempt to unlock a steady stream of meta progression rewards, such as additional heroes and items purchasable mid-attempt. To this day, I have not reached the bottom, and I have a sense I will remain pursuing that objective when the full version launches. Sign me up for the long haul.