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Having experienced more than 200 recent games this year, I am officially turning the page on 2025. My year-end list is live, and I am at peace with the concluding selections, accepting that plenty of excellent games probably slipped by the wayside. Now, there's job is to but sit back, take a short break, and perhaps take a nice walk in the— well, shoot, discovered one more brilliant title. So much for my plans!

A Surprising Favorite Surfaces

In my more casual gaming time, usually reserved for a few oddball curiosities, I've discovered potentially my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that reimagines a classic dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of significant risk peril and prize. Consider this a hipster's insider tip: If you enjoy being aware of a game before it's cool, sample Sol Cesto so you can make a dent in your gaming budget.

A Calculated Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's different from everything I've previously experienced. The setup is that you must venture into a dungeon, going down level by level in search of the sun, which has vanished from its world. Mechanically, this results in some standard crawl progression. Pick a hero possessing unique stats and abilities, fight through each level of foes, collect some stat improvements (represented as teeth), and vanquish a few area guardians. Straightforward, right!

The Unique Central System

The way you actually clear a dungeon room, is unique. Whenever you start another stage, you see a four-by-four matrix of boxes. Every tile holds a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To explore a room, you simply click on one of the four rows, but the specific tile you land in is up to chance.

You might see a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You initially will have a one-in-four probability of selecting any given square in a row.

Subsequently, your probabilities change. So do you press your luck, or do you opt on a alternative option first and aim for more cautious selections early? Herein lies the risk-reward dynamic on display in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing once you get an understanding of it.

Influencing Chance

The meta-layer is that your probabilities can be influenced over the course of a session by picking up teeth that alter which objects you're drawn toward. For example, you might get a perk that will reduce the probability of encountering a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of getting a reward too.

• Developing a strategy is about manipulating math to the utmost to have a higher chance at landing where you want.
• In one run, I invested my attribute improvements toward physical attack/defense and picked as many teeth I could that would increase my odds of being drawn to monsters aligned with that strength.
• In another run, I built my character around loot caches and paired that with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies whenever I opened a chest.

The customization choices are limited, but it provides ample to engage with to let you manipulate the odds according to your strategy.

A Constant Tension

Of course, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There remains the risk that you have a likely outcome to land on the preferred space but wind up hitting a monster that would deplete your final hit point. Every move is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you work through a stage and choose whether to keep clicking or when to move on to the subsequent stage instead of testing fate.

Items like destructive ordnance help cut down the chance, as do some hero powers. A particular character's signature move, powered up by making four moves, allows players to select a vertical line rather than a horizontal row during that action. Should you use your cards right, you can save that move for the right moment to sidestep a dangerous choice. There's a shocking degree of depth in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is still in development, and it has a final update to go before the full version is unleashed. An additional hero and a new boss are planned for release sometime in January. The full launch probably isn't long after, but the game's developers haven't committed to a final date yet.

A Final Thought

No matter when it's fully released, you should consider put Sol Cesto on your radar. For the past week, I've been positively obsessed with it, discovering its hidden nuances and storing my run rewards every session to access a constant flow of meta progression rewards, including additional heroes and items purchasable during a run. I still haven't found the deepest level, and I have a sense I'll still be working on that task when 1.0 finally hits. Count me in for the long haul.