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Having experienced more than 200 new releases this year, I am officially closing the book on 2025. My year-end list is live, and I'm satisfied with the final results, accepting that numerous fantastic releases likely fell through the cracks. Now, there's job is to other than unwind, unplug a little, and maybe enjoy a refreshing hike in the— oh no, discovered one more great game. So much for my plans!

A Surprising Favorite Surfaces

With my laid-back sessions, usually reserved for a handful of quirky titles, I've encountered what might become my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a conventional labyrinth explorer into a luck-based game of significant risk risk and reward. View this a preview for the in-the-know: If you relish discovering a game before it's popular, give Sol Cesto a try so you can burn a spot in your gaming budget.

A Calculated Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's unlike anything I've previously experienced. The premise is that you must venture into a dungeon, descending floor after floor in search of the sun, which has gone missing from its world. Mechanically, this results in some recognizable genre framework. Select a character who has parameters and powers, fight through each level of monsters, collect some stat improvements (in the form of teeth), and overcome a few stage-ending champions. Straightforward, right!

The Unique Central System

The way you effectively complete a dungeon room, though. Each instance you start another stage, you're shown a sixteen-square board of boxes. All spaces either contains 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 determined by luck.

You may face a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You initially will have a one-in-four probability of hitting any given square in a row.

After that, the chances are recalculated. The question becomes: Do you go for it, or do you click on a safer line first and try to make safer moves early? Herein lies the tension between chance and safety in action in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing once you get a feel for it.

Shaping the Odds

The procedural hook is that your percentages can be shaped during an attempt by picking up teeth that change what things you're more attracted to. To illustrate, you could acquire a perk that will decrease your odds of landing on a trap, but will also decrease the odds of getting a reward too.

• Crafting a loadout is about influencing the statistics as best you can to have a higher chance at getting your desired outcome.
• In one run, I focused my power boosts toward brute force and picked as many teeth possible that would increase my odds of attracting me toward monsters of that variety.
• During a separate session, I developed my adventurer around reward boxes and combined that with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies each time I secured loot.

The strategic possibilities are somewhat constrained, but they are sufficient to engage with to allow you to tweak the odds according to your strategy.

An Ever-Present Gamble

Unsurprisingly, it's still a game of chance. You constantly face the possibility that you have a high probability to hit the square you want but ultimately choose on an enemy that would take out your last bit of health. All selections is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you navigate a level and choose whether to press onward or to proceed to the next floor as opposed to pushing your luck.

Consumables including enemy-killing bombs aid in reducing the chance, as do some character abilities. An adventurer's special power, powered up by making four moves, enables you to click on a vertical line in place of a row for that move. By employing this strategically, you can save that move for the right moment to sidestep a dangerous choice. You'll find an astonishing amount of nuance in the basic action of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is remaining in its preview phase, and it has at least one more update scheduled before the final game is unleashed. A new character and a fresh guardian are planned for release sometime in January. The official version may not be much later, but the game's developers haven't announced a specific release window yet.

A Parting Recommendation

Regardless of when its 1.0 launch occurs, you should consider put Sol Cesto in your sights. I've been thoroughly captivated with it, uncovering each of little secrets and banking my earned gold in each run to reveal a continuous trickle of meta progression rewards, such as new characters and items I can buy mid-attempt. To this day, I have not completed the dungeon, and I suspect I will remain working on that task when the full version launches. Sign me up for the complete journey.