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Following my time with in excess of 200 new releases this year, I'm formally wrapping things up on 2025. My best-of compilation is out in the world, and I am at peace with the ultimate rankings, even knowing a host of excellent games probably slipped under the radar. Now, there's job is to but sit back, unplug a little, and maybe enjoy a refreshing hike in the— well, shoot, stumbled upon a great game. And just like that, goodbye to my peaceful respite!

A Surprising Front-Runner Appears

With my laid-back sessions, usually reserved for a handful of quirky titles, I've encountered what might become my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a conventional dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of significant risk danger and payoff. Consider this an early adopter's heads-up: If you relish discovering a game before it's cool, test out Sol Cesto so you can punch a hole in your wallet for unique titles.

A Tactical Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's a departure from all I've previously experienced. The setup is that you must venture into a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper on a quest for the sun, which has vanished from this mythical realm. Mechanically, that makes for some recognizable genre framework. Select a character possessing unique stats and abilities, fight through each level of foes, pick up some permanent upgrades (in the form of teeth), and vanquish a few area guardians. Easy to grasp!

The Distinctive Central System

How you effectively complete a chamber, though. Each instance you enter a new floor, you see a 4x4 grid of boxes. All spaces features a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To make a move, you simply click on one of the horizontal lines, but the exact space you land in is a matter of probability.

You might see a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You initially will have a 25% chance of landing on a specific tile in a row.

Subsequently, your probabilities change. So do you take the risk, or do you opt on a alternative option first and try to make less risky choices early? That's the risk-reward dynamic at play in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing when you acquire an understanding of it.

Influencing Chance

The procedural hook is that your probabilities can be influenced through a run by gathering teeth that modify the types of squares you're more attracted to. As an instance, you may obtain a perk that will lower your chances of hitting a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of finding a reward too.

• Crafting a loadout is about tweaking the numbers optimally to have a higher chance at getting your desired outcome.
• On a particular session, I put all my stat upgrades toward brute force and chose every teeth I could that would boost my chances of being drawn to monsters aligned with that strength.
• On a different attempt, I constructed my hero around treasure chests and paired that with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies whenever I secured loot.

The customization choices are somewhat constrained, but they are sufficient to experiment with to let you manipulate probabilities the way you want.

A Persistent Risk

Of course, it's still a game of chance. You constantly face the chance that you have a likely outcome to land on the preferred space but end up landing a monster that would eliminate your remaining life. All selections is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you navigate a level and decide when to keep clicking or to proceed to the next floor instead of risking it all.

Items like enemy-killing bombs help cut down the chance, just like some hero powers. An adventurer's special power, charged after selecting four tiles, enables you to choose a vertical line instead of a row on a turn. By employing this strategically, you can hold that ability for an optimal time to avoid a risky decision. You'll find an astonishing amount of nuance in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is currently in development, and it has at least one more update to go before the complete edition is launched. An additional hero and a fresh guardian are planned for release sometime in January. The 1.0 release may not be long after, but the studio haven't committed to a concrete launch day yet.

A Final Thought

Whenever the complete game arrives, you should consider put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I have been completely engrossed with it, discovering its little secrets and saving my accumulated currency every session to unlock a steady stream of permanent unlocks, including new characters and items available for acquisition mid-attempt. I still haven't completed the dungeon, and I suspect I'll continue attempting that goal when 1.0 finally hits. I'm committed for the long haul.