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After playing well over 200 recent games this year, I am officially turning the page on 2025. My year-end list is published, and I'm satisfied with the final results, despite being aware a host of fantastic releases may have dropped under the radar. Now, there's job is to but sit back, disconnect briefly, and possibly go for a refreshing hike in the— oh no, found another great game. And just like that, goodbye to my peaceful respite!

A Premature Front-Runner Appears

In my more off-hours play, usually reserved for a handful of quirky titles, I've discovered potentially my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that reimagines a traditional dungeon crawler into a probability-fueled game of major consequence risk and reward. Consider this a preview for the in-the-know: If you relish discovering a game before it's popular, sample Sol Cesto so you can punch a hole in your gaming budget.

A Strategic Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's unlike anything I've previously experienced. The setup is that you must venture into a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper on a quest for the sun, which has disappeared from the fantasy world. When you play, this results in some standard crawl progression. Pick a hero possessing unique parameters and powers, clear floor after floor of foes, collect some permanent upgrades (in the form of teeth), and overcome a few biome bosses. Easy to grasp!

The Novel Gameplay Loop

The way you actually clear a dungeon room, however. Every time you enter a new floor, the game presents a sixteen-square board of boxes. Each square features a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To explore a room, you just select on one of the four rows, but which square you select is a matter of probability.

You might see a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You initially will have a 25% chance of hitting a particular space in a row.

Then, you'll odds shift. The question becomes: Do you take the risk, or do you opt on a safer line first and aim for safer moves early? That's the tension between chance and safety in action in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing when you acquire a feel for it.

Influencing Chance

The meta-layer is that your percentages can be shaped through a run by collecting teeth that alter which objects you're more likely to land on. For example, you may obtain a perk that will reduce the probability of hitting a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of landing on a treasure chest too.

• Developing a strategy is about tweaking the numbers optimally to have a improved likelihood at selecting the optimal square.
• On a particular session, I focused my power boosts toward physical attack/defense and picked as many teeth possible that would increase my odds of landing on monsters of that variety.
• In another run, I built my character around reward boxes and coupled it with a perk that would debuff nearby foes each time I opened a chest.

The build options are limited, but there's enough to experiment with to allow you to tweak the odds to your preference.

An Ever-Present Gamble

Of course, it remains a game of chance. There remains the chance that you have an 80% chance to hit the square you want but wind up hitting a foe that would eliminate your final hit point. All selections is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you work through a stage and decide when to continue selecting or to advance to the subsequent stage instead of testing fate.

Items like enemy-killing bombs help cut down the chance, similar to some special skills. A particular character's signature move, charged after clearing four squares, enables you to select a vertical column rather than a row for that move. Should you use this strategically, you can hold that ability for a crucial point to circumvent a perilous selection. There's a shocking degree of depth in the simple act of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is currently in development, and it has a final update to go until the final game is unleashed. Another playable adventurer and a new boss are planned for release sometime in January. The official version may not be long after, but the studio haven't committed to a final date yet.

A Final Endorsement

No matter when it's fully released, you should consider put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I've been positively obsessed with it, discovering its small details and saving my accumulated currency every session to unlock a steady stream of meta progression rewards, featuring additional heroes and items available for acquisition mid-attempt. As of now, I am yet to found the deepest level, and I suspect I'll still be pursuing that objective when the official release drops. I'm committed for the long haul.