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After playing well over 200 recent games this year, I'm formally turning the page on 2025. My annual roundup is published, and I feel content with the ultimate rankings, accepting that a host of fantastic releases likely fell by the wayside. Now, there's nothing for me to do but sit back, take a short break, and maybe enjoy a nice walk in the— ah crap, stumbled upon a brilliant title. And just like that, goodbye to my peaceful respite!

An Early Favorite Surfaces

With my off-hours play, typically earmarked for a selection of unusual games, I've discovered what might become my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive roguelike for Windows PC that deconstructs a classic dungeon crawler into a luck-based game of major consequence risk and reward. View this a hipster's insider tip: If you take pride discovering a game before it's popular, test out Sol Cesto so you can make a dent in your wallet for unique titles.

A Tactical Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's different from everything I'm familiar with. The setup is that you need to explore a dungeon, going down level by level in search of the sun, which has vanished from this mythical realm. In practice, this creates some standard crawl progression. Select a character who has parameters and powers, defeat enemies on every stage of foes, acquire some stat improvements (which are teeth), and defeat a few area guardians. Straightforward, right!

The Novel Core Mechanic

The way you truly navigate a area, is unique. Each instance you begin a fresh level, you're shown a sixteen-square board of boxes. Each square either contains a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To explore a room, you just select on one of the horizontal lines, but the specific tile you end up on is determined by luck.

You may face a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You start with a 25% chance of selecting any given square in a row.

Subsequently, your odds shift. So do you press your luck, or do you choose on a safer line first and attempt some less risky choices early? That's the risk-reward dynamic on display in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating after you develop a feel for it.

Influencing Chance

The roguelike twist is that your odds can be manipulated through a run by collecting teeth that change what things you're drawn toward. To illustrate, 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 influencing the statistics to the utmost to have a improved likelihood at getting your desired outcome.
• On a particular session, I put all my power boosts toward brute force 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 paired that with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies each time I secured loot.

The customization choices are not endless, but it provides ample to work with to enable you to influence probabilities to your preference.

A Constant Gamble

Unsurprisingly, it remains a game of chance. There's always the chance that you have a high probability to land on the desired tile but ultimately choose a foe that would take out your last bit of health. Each click is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you clear a floor out and decide when to continue selecting or to proceed to the next floor as opposed to pushing your luck.

Tools such as destructive ordnance aid in reducing the chance, just like some hero powers. An adventurer's unique ability, activated once making four moves, allows players to select a vertical line instead of a horizontal row for that move. By employing this move wisely, you can reserve that option for a crucial point to sidestep a dangerous choice. There's a shocking amount of nuance in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is still in its preview phase, and it has another update to go until the final game is released. Another playable adventurer and a new boss are scheduled to arrive before the conclusion of January. The 1.0 release likely won't be long after, but the game's developers haven't set a final date yet.

A Concluding Recommendation

Regardless of when the complete game arrives, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I have been completely engrossed with it, uncovering each of little secrets and saving my accumulated currency every session to access a constant flow of meta progression rewards, including additional heroes and items available for acquisition while playing. I still haven't found the deepest level, and I get the feeling I'll continue working on that task when 1.0 finally hits. I'm committed for the complete journey.