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Following my time with well over 200 recent games this year, I'm formally turning the page on 2025. My best-of compilation is live, and I'm satisfied with the ultimate rankings, despite being aware plenty of fantastic releases likely fell by the wayside. Now, there's plan is to other than unwind, take a short break, and maybe enjoy a nice walk in the— oh no, stumbled upon a great game. So much for my peaceful respite!

A Premature Favorite Surfaces

In my more off-hours play, often set aside for a handful of quirky titles, I've discovered potentially my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive roguelike for Windows PC that reimagines a traditional dungeon crawler into a luck-based game of significant risk risk and reward. View this an early adopter's heads-up: If you take pride being aware of a game before it hits the mainstream, give Sol Cesto a try so you can burn a spot 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 vanished from this mythical realm. In practice, that makes for some familiar roguelike structure. Select a character possessing unique attributes and skills, clear floor after floor of monsters, collect some permanent upgrades (represented as teeth), and defeat a few biome bosses. Straightforward, right!

The Distinctive Core Mechanic

How you truly navigate a dungeon room, though. Each instance you enter a new floor, you see a four-by-four matrix of boxes. All spaces features a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To proceed, you simply click on one of the four rows, but the exact space 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 start with a quarter likelihood of landing on a specific tile in a row.

After that, the chances are recalculated. So do you take the risk, or do you choose on a alternative option first and attempt some safer moves early? Herein lies the risk-reward dynamic in action in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating after you develop an understanding of it.

Influencing Chance

The procedural hook is that your odds can be manipulated over the course of a session by picking up teeth that change what things you're more attracted to. For example, you might get a perk that will reduce the probability of hitting a trap, but will also decrease the odds of getting a treasure chest too.

• Developing a strategy is about manipulating math as best you can to have a better shot at selecting the optimal square.
• During one attempt, I put all my stat upgrades toward brute force and picked as many teeth I could that would increase my odds of attracting me toward monsters of that variety.
• During a separate session, I developed my adventurer around loot caches and coupled it with a perk that would debuff nearby foes each time I opened a chest.

The build options are somewhat constrained, but there's enough to engage with to allow you to tweak numbers to your preference.

A Persistent Risk

Unsurprisingly, it remains a game of chance. There's always the chance that you have a high probability to land on the square you want but wind up hitting on an enemy that would take out your final hit point. Each click is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you work through a stage and determine if to continue selecting or to advance to the following level rather than pushing your luck.

Tools such as explosive devices help cut down the chance, as do some hero powers. One hero's signature move, charged after clearing four squares, lets gamers to click on a vertical column in place of a horizontal line for that move. If you play your cards right, you can save that move for a crucial point to avoid a risky decision. You'll find an astonishing level of strategy in the simple act of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is still in its preview phase, and it has a final update planned before the full version is released. A new character and a new boss are planned for release sometime in January. The 1.0 release likely won't be long after, but the creators haven't announced a specific release window yet.

A Concluding Endorsement

Whenever the complete game arrives, you might want to put Sol Cesto in your sights. I've been positively obsessed with it, discovering its little secrets and storing my run rewards every session to unlock a steady stream of permanent unlocks, including fresh adventurers and items I can buy mid-attempt. As of now, I am yet to found the deepest level, and I get the feeling I'll continue attempting that goal when 1.0 finally hits. Count me in for the complete journey.