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Following my time with more than 200 fresh titles this year, I am officially closing the book on 2025. My year-end list is published, and I'm satisfied with the final results, despite being aware plenty of excellent games probably slipped through the cracks. Currently, my only nothing for me to do but sit back, disconnect briefly, and possibly go for a refreshing hike in the— ah crap, found another great game. And just like that, goodbye to my plans!

A Surprising Favorite Surfaces

During my casual gaming time, usually reserved for a handful of quirky titles, I've come across what might become my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that deconstructs a traditional dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of high stakes danger and payoff. Take this as a hipster's insider tip: If you take pride discovering a game before it hits the mainstream, test out Sol Cesto so you can punch a hole in your wallet for unique titles.

A Strategic Dungeon-Crawling Innovation

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's different from everything I'm familiar with. The setup is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper in search of the sun, which has gone missing from its world. Mechanically, this creates some familiar roguelike structure. Pick a hero who has attributes and skills, clear floor after floor of foes, collect some passive buffs (in the form of teeth), and overcome a few biome bosses. Straightforward, right!

The Distinctive Gameplay Loop

How you actually clear a chamber, though. Every time you begin a fresh level, the game presents a 4x4 grid of boxes. Each square features a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To make a move, you simply click on one of the horizontal lines, but which square you end up on is determined by luck.

You might see a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You begin with a one-in-four probability of selecting any given square in a row.

Subsequently, your probabilities change. The question becomes: Do you press your luck, or do you click on a different row first and try to make safer moves early? This is the risk-reward dynamic in action in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing once you get a feel for it.

Manipulating Probability

The procedural hook is that your odds can be manipulated during an attempt by collecting teeth that alter which objects you're more attracted to. As an instance, you may obtain a perk that will reduce the probability of landing on a trap, but will also decrease the odds of finding a treasure chest too.

• Developing a strategy is about tweaking the numbers optimally to have a better shot at landing where you want.
• In one run, I put all my power boosts toward physical attack/defense and selected all the teeth I could that would boost my chances of attracting me toward monsters with that damage type.
• In another run, I constructed my hero around reward boxes and combined that with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters every time I claimed a reward.

The customization choices are somewhat constrained, but there's enough to engage with to enable you to influence numbers to your preference.

A Persistent Gamble

Unsurprisingly, it's still a game of chance. There remains the chance that you have a high probability to hit the desired tile but wind up hitting on an enemy that would take out your final hit point. All selections is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you clear a floor out and decide when to keep clicking or when to move on to the subsequent stage instead of testing fate.

Items like destructive ordnance aid in reducing the chance, similar to some hero powers. One hero's signature move, charged after making four moves, enables you to select a vertical column instead of a row for that move. Should you use this move wisely, you can reserve that option for the right moment to circumvent a perilous selection. There's a shocking amount of nuance in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is currently in its preview phase, and it has a final update scheduled before the final game is launched. A new character and a new boss are expected to drop sometime in January. The full launch may not be far behind, but the game's developers haven't committed to a final date yet.

A Concluding Thought

Regardless of when the complete game arrives, you ought to put Sol Cesto in your sights. For the past week, I've been positively obsessed with it, finding all of little secrets and storing my run rewards every session to access a constant flow of permanent unlocks, such as additional heroes and items available for acquisition while playing. To this day, I have not reached the bottom, and I suspect I'll still be attempting that goal when 1.0 finally hits. I'm committed for the complete journey.