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After playing more than 200 fresh titles this year, I am officially wrapping things up on 2025. My year-end list is published, and I'm satisfied with the final results, despite being aware plenty of fantastic releases probably slipped through the cracks. Now, there's nothing for me to do other than unwind, take a short break, and possibly go for a pleasant stroll in the— ah crap, found another great game. So much for my plans!

A Premature Favorite Surfaces

In my more casual gaming time, typically earmarked for a selection of unusual games, I've discovered what might become my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive roguelike for Windows PC that deconstructs a traditional labyrinth explorer into a probability-fueled game of major consequence peril and prize. Take this as a preview for the in-the-know: If you take pride being aware of a game before it's popular, test out Sol Cesto so you can make a dent in your wallet for unique titles.

A Tactical Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's unlike anything I've ever played. The premise is that you must venture into a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper in search of the sun, which has vanished from its world. Mechanically, this results in some familiar roguelike structure. Pick a hero who has attributes and skills, clear floor after floor of enemies, collect some passive buffs (represented as teeth), and vanquish a few area guardians. Simple enough!

The Distinctive Gameplay Loop

The method by which you truly navigate a area, though. Every time you enter a new floor, the game presents a four-by-four matrix of boxes. All spaces holds a monster, a treasure chest, 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 land in is a matter of probability.

You could encounter a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You start with a quarter likelihood of hitting a specific tile in a row.

Then, you'll chances are recalculated. The question becomes: Do you press your luck, or do you opt on a safer line first and try to make safer moves early? That's the push-your-luck gameplay on display in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing when you acquire its rhythm.

Manipulating Probability

The procedural hook is that your odds can be manipulated over the course of a session by gathering teeth that change what things you're more attracted to. For example, you could acquire a perk that will lower your chances of landing on a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of finding a reward too.

• Creating a build is about manipulating math as best you can to have a improved likelihood at selecting the optimal square.
• During one attempt, I put all my attribute improvements toward physical attack/defense and selected all the teeth I could that would increase my odds of landing on monsters with that damage type.
• During a separate session, I developed my adventurer around loot caches and paired that with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters whenever I secured loot.

The customization choices are somewhat constrained, but they are sufficient to experiment with to enable you to influence numbers according to your strategy.

A Constant Tension

Unsurprisingly, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There remains the possibility that you have a likely outcome to select the square you want but wind up hitting a monster that would eliminate your last bit of health. All selections is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you work through a stage and decide when to keep clicking or to advance to the following level rather than testing fate.

Consumables including destructive ordnance assist in minimizing the chance, as do some hero powers. An adventurer's special power, charged after selecting four tiles, enables you to click on a vertical line in place of a horizontal row for that move. If you play this strategically, you can save that move for an optimal time to circumvent a perilous selection. It's a surprising amount of nuance in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is still in development, and it has at least one more update planned before the full version is launched. Another playable adventurer and a fresh guardian are planned for release before the conclusion of January. The 1.0 release probably isn't far behind, but the creators haven't committed to a concrete launch day yet.

A Concluding Endorsement

Regardless of when the complete game arrives, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. For the past week, I've been thoroughly captivated with it, discovering its little secrets and storing my run rewards per attempt to unlock a steady stream of permanent unlocks, including fresh adventurers and items I can buy mid-attempt. I still haven't found the deepest level, and I suspect I will remain pursuing that objective when the official release drops. Count me in for the complete journey.