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Following my time with more than 200 recent games this year, I'm formally wrapping things up on 2025. My best-of compilation is published, and I'm satisfied with the concluding selections, accepting that numerous excellent games probably slipped under the radar. At this point, it's plan is to except relax, disconnect briefly, and perhaps take a refreshing hike in the— ah crap, found another great game. So much for my plans!

An Early Front-Runner Appears

In my more laid-back sessions, often set aside for a handful of quirky titles, I've discovered what could be my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar roguelike for Windows PC that reimagines a classic dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of significant risk risk and reward. Consider this a preview for the in-the-know: If you relish in knowing about a game before it's popular, give Sol Cesto a try so you can burn a spot in your indie credit card.

A Strategic Dungeon-Crawling Innovation

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's different from everything I'm familiar with. The premise is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, descending floor after floor on a quest for the sun, which has gone missing from the fantasy world. When you play, this creates some standard crawl progression. Pick a hero who has parameters and powers, fight through each level of enemies, collect some passive buffs (represented as teeth), and vanquish a few area guardians. Easy to grasp!

The Unique Gameplay Loop

The way you effectively complete a chamber, however. Every time you start another stage, you're shown a sixteen-square board of boxes. All spaces holds a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To proceed, you simply click on one of the horizontal lines, but the specific tile you end up on is a matter of probability.

You may face a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You start with a 25% chance of landing on a specific tile in a row.

After that, the chances are recalculated. The question becomes: Do you take the risk, or do you choose on a different row first and attempt some safer moves early? Herein lies the tension between chance and safety at play in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing once you get a feel for it.

Influencing Chance

The meta-layer is that your odds can be manipulated through a run by collecting teeth that modify the types of squares you're drawn toward. As an instance, you might get a perk that will reduce the probability of landing on a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of getting a treasure chest too.

• Crafting a loadout is about influencing the statistics as best you can to have a improved likelihood at getting your desired outcome.
• In one run, I focused my power boosts toward physical attack/defense and selected all the teeth I could that would boost my chances of landing on monsters aligned with that strength.
• During a separate session, I constructed my hero around reward boxes and paired that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes each time I opened a chest.

The strategic possibilities are not endless, but there's enough to work with to let you manipulate the odds to your preference.

A Constant Tension

Naturally, at its heart, it's a game of chance. You constantly face the chance that you have an 80% chance to select the desired tile but ultimately choose a monster that would deplete your remaining life. Each click is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you clear a floor out and determine if to keep clicking or when to move on to the next floor rather than testing fate.

Tools such as explosive devices assist in minimizing the chance, as do some special skills. One hero's signature move, activated once making four moves, allows players to select a column rather than a horizontal line for that move. By employing this strategically, you can save that move for an optimal time to sidestep a dangerous choice. There's a shocking level of strategy in the simple act of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is still in its preview phase, and it has a final update planned before the full version is launched. An additional hero and a additional end-level foe are expected to drop sometime in January. The 1.0 release probably isn't far behind, but the creators haven't announced a specific release window yet.

A Concluding Recommendation

No matter when the complete game arrives, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your radar. For the past week, I've been positively obsessed with it, finding all of little secrets and storing my run rewards in each run to reveal a continuous trickle of persistent upgrades, such as fresh adventurers and items available for acquisition while playing. As of now, I am yet to found the deepest level, and I suspect I'll continue pursuing that objective when the full version launches. I'm committed for the long haul.