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Having experienced more than 200 new releases this year, I am officially closing the book on 2025. My best-of compilation is live, and I am at peace with the ultimate rankings, accepting that numerous excellent games may have dropped under the radar. Currently, my only job is to but sit back, take a short break, and perhaps take a refreshing hike in the— oh no, found another brilliant title. So much for my intentions!

An Early Front-Runner Appears

With my off-hours play, often set aside for a few oddball curiosities, I've discovered potentially my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar roguelike for Windows PC that breaks down a classic dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of high stakes peril and prize. Take this as a preview for the in-the-know: If you relish discovering a game before it's cool, give Sol Cesto a try so you can punch a hole in your gaming budget.

A Strategic Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's a departure from all I've ever played. The setup is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, going down level by level to find the sun, which has vanished from its world. When you play, that makes for some recognizable genre framework. Choose an adventurer with their own stats and abilities, defeat enemies on every stage of foes, pick up some permanent upgrades (represented as teeth), and defeat a few biome bosses. Simple enough!

The Novel Gameplay Loop

How you truly navigate a dungeon room, is unique. Whenever you begin a fresh level, you're shown a 4x4 grid of boxes. Every tile either contains a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To explore a room, you simply click on one of the horizontal lines, but the exact space you select is up to chance.

You could encounter a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You start with a quarter likelihood of selecting a particular space in a row.

Subsequently, your odds shift. The question becomes: Do you press your luck, or do you click on a different row first and aim for more cautious selections early? This is the risk-reward dynamic on display in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating once you get its rhythm.

Manipulating Probability

The roguelike twist is that your probabilities can be influenced during an attempt by collecting teeth that alter which objects you're drawn toward. To illustrate, you might get a perk that will reduce the probability of hitting a trap, but will also decrease the odds of landing on a treasure chest too.

• Creating a build is about tweaking the numbers to the utmost to have a better shot at getting your desired outcome.
• During one attempt, I focused my power boosts toward melee prowess and picked as many teeth I could that would boost my chances of attracting me toward monsters aligned with that strength.
• On a different attempt, I constructed my hero around reward boxes and paired that with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies whenever I claimed a reward.

The build options are limited, but it provides ample to experiment with to allow you to tweak probabilities the way you want.

A Persistent Risk

Naturally, at its heart, it's a game of chance. You constantly face the possibility that you have an 80% chance to land on the square you want but ultimately choose a foe that would eliminate your final hit point. All selections is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you navigate a level and decide when to continue selecting or when to move on to the following level as opposed to pushing your luck.

Tools such as destructive ordnance assist in minimizing the chance, just like some hero powers. An adventurer's special power, activated once clearing four squares, allows players to click on a column rather than a row during that action. By employing this strategically, you can save that move for a crucial point to avoid a risky decision. You'll find an astonishing amount of nuance in the basic action of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is remaining in development, and it has another update scheduled until the full version is unleashed. Another playable adventurer and a new boss are expected to drop before the conclusion of January. The full launch may not be much later, but the creators haven't committed to a final date yet.

A Concluding Endorsement

No matter when it's fully released, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. For the past week, I've been positively obsessed with it, uncovering each of small details and saving my accumulated currency every session to unlock a steady stream of permanent unlocks, featuring additional heroes and items I can buy while playing. I still haven't found the deepest level, and I get the feeling I will remain working on that task when the official release drops. Sign me up for the entire experience.