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Having experienced well over 200 recent games this year, I'm formally turning the page on 2025. My best-of compilation is published, and I feel content with the final results, despite being aware plenty of excellent games probably slipped under the radar. Currently, my only nothing for me to do but sit back, unplug a little, and maybe enjoy a pleasant stroll in the— well, shoot, found another brilliant title. There go my intentions!

A Premature Front-Runner Appears

During my off-hours play, typically earmarked for a handful of quirky titles, I've encountered what could be my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual roguelike for Windows PC that reimagines a traditional dungeon crawler into a luck-based game of significant risk risk and reward. Consider this an early adopter's heads-up: If you relish discovering a game before it's popular, test out Sol Cesto so you can punch a hole in your indie credit card.

A Strategic Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's a departure from all I've previously experienced. The concept is that you need to explore a dungeon, descending floor after floor to find the sun, which has disappeared from the fantasy world. Mechanically, this results in some recognizable genre framework. Choose an adventurer who has parameters and powers, defeat enemies on every stage of monsters, collect some permanent upgrades (represented as teeth), and overcome a few stage-ending champions. Easy to grasp!

The Novel Central System

The method by which you actually clear a dungeon room, though. Every time you start another stage, the game presents a 4x4 grid of boxes. Every tile holds a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To make a move, you choose on one of the horizontal lines, but the exact space you land in is a matter of probability.

You might see a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You start with a one-in-four probability of hitting a particular space in a row.

Then, you'll chances are recalculated. So do you press your luck, or do you choose on a different row first and aim for less risky choices early? Herein lies the push-your-luck gameplay at play in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing once you get an understanding of it.

Manipulating Probability

The meta-layer is that your percentages can be shaped over the course of a session by gathering teeth that alter which objects you're drawn toward. As an instance, you might get a perk that will lower your chances of encountering a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of landing on a reward too.

• Crafting a loadout is about tweaking the numbers as best you can to have a better shot at selecting the optimal square.
• In one run, I put all my attribute improvements toward brute force and chose every teeth possible that would boost my chances of being drawn to monsters with that damage type.
• During a separate session, I built my character around reward boxes and combined that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes whenever I opened a chest.

The build options are not endless, but they are sufficient to experiment with to let you manipulate the odds to your preference.

An Ever-Present Gamble

Naturally, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There's always the possibility that you have a likely outcome to land on the desired tile but wind up hitting a monster that would eliminate your remaining life. All selections is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you work through a stage and choose whether to keep clicking or when to move on to the subsequent stage as opposed to pushing your luck.

Tools such as explosive devices assist in minimizing the chance, similar to some character abilities. One hero's special power, activated once clearing four squares, enables you to select a column rather than a horizontal row for that move. By employing this move wisely, you can hold that ability for the right moment to avoid a risky decision. It's a surprising amount of nuance in the simple act of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is still in development, and it has at least one more update to go before the final game is released. A new character and a fresh guardian are planned for release by the end of January. The full launch may not be far behind, but the studio haven't set a concrete launch day yet.

A Parting Endorsement

Regardless of when it's fully released, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. For the past week, I've been thoroughly captivated with it, uncovering each of hidden nuances and storing my run rewards per attempt to access a constant flow of meta progression rewards, including new characters and items available for acquisition while playing. I still haven't found the deepest level, and I have a sense I'll continue working on that task when the official release drops. I'm committed for the entire experience.