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Following my time with in excess of 200 new releases this year, It's time to turning the page on 2025. My best-of compilation is live, and I am at peace with the final results, accepting that numerous fantastic releases likely fell by the wayside. At this point, it's nothing for me to do other than unwind, take a short break, and perhaps take a refreshing hike in the— oh no, stumbled upon a great game. There go my plans!

An Early Front-Runner Appears

With my casual gaming time, usually reserved for a handful of quirky titles, I've come across what could be my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that deconstructs a conventional labyrinth explorer into a luck-based game of major consequence risk and reward. Consider this a preview for the in-the-know: If you relish in knowing about a game before it's popular, sample Sol Cesto so you can burn a spot in your indie credit card.

A Tactical Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's a departure from all I've previously experienced. The premise is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, going down level by level in search of the sun, which has gone missing from this mythical realm. When you play, this creates some recognizable genre framework. Pick a hero possessing unique attributes and skills, clear floor after floor of foes, pick up some permanent upgrades (represented as teeth), and defeat a few stage-ending champions. Straightforward, right!

The Distinctive Core Mechanic

How you actually clear a chamber, though. Every time you begin a fresh level, the game presents a sixteen-square board of boxes. Each square features a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To make a move, you just select on one of the horizontal lines, but the exact space you land in is a matter of probability.

You may face a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You start with a quarter likelihood of hitting a specific tile in a row.

Then, you'll chances are recalculated. So do you take the risk, or do you opt on a safer line first and attempt some less risky choices early? That's the tension between chance and safety on display in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing once you get a feel for it.

Shaping the Odds

The procedural hook is that your probabilities can be influenced through a run by collecting teeth that modify the types of squares you're drawn toward. To illustrate, you could acquire a perk that will decrease your odds of encountering a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of finding a reward too.

• Crafting a loadout is about manipulating math optimally to have a improved likelihood at selecting the optimal square.
• During one attempt, I put all my power boosts toward melee prowess and selected all the teeth possible that would improve my probability of being drawn to monsters of that variety.
• On a different attempt, I built my character around reward boxes and coupled it with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters each time I claimed a reward.

The customization choices are limited, but they are sufficient to work with to allow you to tweak numbers to your preference.

A Persistent Risk

Of course, it remains a game of chance. There's always the possibility that you have a high probability to hit the square you want but end up landing a foe that would take out your final hit point. Every move is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you work through a stage and choose whether to continue selecting or when to move on to the following level as opposed to testing fate.

Tools such as destructive ordnance help cut down the chance, just like some hero powers. A particular character's unique ability, activated once selecting four tiles, enables you to choose a vertical line rather than a horizontal row on a turn. Should you use this strategically, you can save that move for the right moment to avoid a risky decision. It's a surprising degree of depth in the basic action of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is currently in its preview phase, and it has another update to go until the final game is unleashed. Another playable adventurer and a fresh guardian are planned for release by the end of January. The full launch may not be far behind, but the game's developers haven't set a specific release window yet.

A Concluding Recommendation

Regardless of when its 1.0 launch occurs, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I've been completely engrossed with it, discovering its small details and banking my earned gold in each run to access a constant flow of permanent unlocks, including fresh adventurers and items I can buy while playing. I still haven't found the deepest level, and I suspect I'll continue working on that task when the full version launches. Sign me up for the complete journey.