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Having experienced in excess of 200 recent games this year, It's time to closing the book on 2025. My best-of compilation is live, and I am at peace with the concluding selections, despite being aware plenty of fantastic releases likely fell through the cracks. Now, there's nothing for me to do but sit back, unplug a little, and maybe enjoy a pleasant stroll in the— ah crap, found another brilliant title. And just like that, goodbye to my peaceful respite!

A Surprising Contender Emerges

With my laid-back sessions, typically earmarked for a selection of unusual games, I've come across what could be my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that reimagines a conventional dungeon crawler into a probability-fueled game of significant risk peril and prize. View this a hipster's insider tip: If you relish being aware of a game before it hits the mainstream, sample Sol Cesto so you can make a dent in your wallet for unique titles.

A Tactical Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's unlike anything I've ever played. The concept is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper on a quest for the sun, which has gone missing from the fantasy world. When you play, this creates some recognizable genre framework. Select a character with their own stats and abilities, defeat enemies on every stage of enemies, pick up some stat improvements (which are teeth), and vanquish a few stage-ending champions. Simple enough!

The Novel Gameplay Loop

The way you actually clear a area, though. Whenever you enter a new floor, the game presents a sixteen-square board of boxes. Each square either contains a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To proceed, you choose on one of the horizontal lines, but the exact space you select is up to chance.

You might see a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You initially will have a quarter likelihood of hitting a specific tile in a row.

After that, the chances are recalculated. So do you take the risk, or do you opt on a different row first and attempt some more cautious selections early? That's the risk-reward dynamic on display in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing after you develop an understanding of it.

Manipulating Probability

The roguelike twist is that your odds can be manipulated over the course of a session by picking up teeth that change what things you're more likely to land on. For example, you could acquire a perk that will decrease your odds of encountering a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of landing on a treasure chest too.

• Creating a build is about influencing the statistics to the utmost to have a better shot at landing where you want.
• In one run, I focused my power boosts toward physical attack/defense and selected all the teeth possible that would boost my chances of landing on monsters with that damage type.
• In another run, 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 not endless, but it provides ample to experiment with to let you manipulate numbers according to your strategy.

A Constant Gamble

Of course, it's still a game of chance. There's always the risk that you have a high probability to hit the square you want but wind up hitting a monster that would deplete your last bit of health. Each click is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you work through a stage and decide when to keep clicking or when to move on to the subsequent stage as opposed to pushing your luck.

Consumables including enemy-killing bombs aid in reducing the chance, just like some hero powers. An adventurer's special power, activated once clearing four squares, allows players to click on a column instead of a horizontal line during that action. Should you use this move wisely, you can save that move for an optimal time to sidestep a dangerous choice. You'll find an astonishing amount of nuance in the basic action of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is currently in early access, and it has another update to go before the complete edition is launched. A new character and a additional end-level foe are expected to drop sometime in January. The 1.0 release may not be long after, but the game's developers haven't announced a final date yet.

A Parting Endorsement

Whenever the complete game arrives, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I've been completely engrossed with it, finding all of little secrets and saving my accumulated currency every session to unlock a steady stream of persistent upgrades, featuring fresh adventurers and items purchasable mid-attempt. To this day, I have not completed the dungeon, and I get the feeling I'll still be attempting that goal when the full version launches. Sign me up for the complete journey.