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Having experienced well over 200 new releases this year, I am officially wrapping things up on 2025. My year-end list is out in the world, and I feel content with the concluding selections, despite being aware plenty of excellent games likely fell under the radar. Currently, my only job is to but sit back, disconnect briefly, and possibly go for a nice walk in the— well, shoot, discovered one more amazing experience. There go my plans!

A Surprising Contender Emerges

In my more casual gaming time, typically earmarked for a handful of quirky titles, I've come across potentially my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual roguelike for Windows PC that breaks down a conventional labyrinth explorer into a luck-based game of significant risk danger and payoff. View this a hipster's insider tip: If you relish being aware of a game before it hits the mainstream, test out Sol Cesto so you can burn a spot in your wallet for unique titles.

A Tactical Dungeon-Crawling Innovation

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's a departure from all I'm familiar with. The premise is that you must venture into a dungeon, going down level by level to find the sun, which has disappeared from this mythical realm. Mechanically, that makes for some standard crawl progression. Select a character who has attributes and skills, clear floor after floor of enemies, acquire some passive buffs (in the form of teeth), and vanquish a few stage-ending champions. Simple enough!

The Distinctive Gameplay Loop

The way you actually clear a chamber, however. Every time you enter a new floor, the game presents a 4x4 grid of boxes. All spaces features a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To proceed, you just select on one of the horizontal lines, but the specific tile you select is a matter of probability.

You might see a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You begin with a 25% chance of landing on a specific tile in a row.

Subsequently, your probabilities change. The question becomes: Do you go for it, or do you opt on a alternative option first and attempt some more cautious selections early? Herein lies the tension between chance and safety in action in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating once you get its rhythm.

Shaping the Odds

The roguelike twist is that your percentages can be shaped over the course of a session by collecting teeth that change what things you're drawn toward. To illustrate, you might get a perk that will lower your chances of hitting a trap, but will also decrease the odds of finding a treasure chest too.

• Developing a strategy is about tweaking the numbers to the utmost to have a higher chance at selecting the optimal square.
• In one run, I focused my stat upgrades toward physical attack/defense and selected all the teeth possible that would increase my odds of being drawn to monsters aligned with that strength.
• In another run, I built my character around treasure chests and combined that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes whenever I opened a chest.

The customization choices are somewhat constrained, but there's enough to engage with to let you manipulate probabilities the way you want.

A Persistent Tension

Naturally, it remains a game of chance. There's always the possibility that you have a likely outcome to land on the desired tile but wind up hitting on an enemy that would deplete your final hit point. Each click is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you clear a floor out and choose whether to continue selecting or when to move on to the next floor instead of testing fate.

Items like destructive ordnance assist in minimizing the chance, as do some special skills. A particular character's signature move, charged after selecting four tiles, allows players to click on a vertical column instead of a horizontal line during that action. Should you use this strategically, you can save that move for the right moment to sidestep a dangerous choice. It's a surprising amount of nuance in the basic action of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is currently in development, and it has at least one more update to go until the full version is unleashed. A new character and a new boss are scheduled to arrive before the conclusion of January. The full launch probably isn't much later, but the game's developers haven't committed to a specific release window yet.

A Parting Endorsement

Regardless of when it's fully released, you might want to put Sol Cesto in your sights. For the past week, I've been completely engrossed with it, discovering its small details and saving my accumulated currency per attempt to unlock a steady stream of permanent unlocks, including new characters and items purchasable during a run. I still haven't completed the dungeon, and I suspect I'll still be pursuing that objective when the full version launches. Count me in for the long haul.