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After playing more than 200 recent games this year, I am officially turning the page on 2025. My year-end list is live, and I feel content with the ultimate rankings, despite being aware plenty of stellar titles likely fell by the wayside. Currently, my only plan is to other than unwind, take a short break, and perhaps take a pleasant stroll in the— ah crap, stumbled upon a brilliant title. And just like that, goodbye to my plans!

An Early Contender Emerges

With my laid-back sessions, usually reserved for a selection of unusual games, I've encountered potentially my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that deconstructs a traditional dungeon crawler into a luck-based game of major consequence risk and reward. Consider this an early adopter's heads-up: If you enjoy in knowing about a game before it hits the mainstream, give Sol Cesto a try so you can burn a spot in your gaming budget.

A Tactical Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's a departure from all I've ever played. The setup is that you must venture into a dungeon, descending floor after floor on a quest for the sun, which has disappeared from the fantasy world. When you play, this results in some recognizable genre framework. Select a character possessing unique stats and abilities, clear floor after floor of monsters, collect some passive buffs (which are teeth), and defeat a few biome bosses. Easy to grasp!

The Distinctive Central System

How you effectively complete a dungeon room, though. Whenever you enter a new floor, 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 just select on one of the four rows, but the exact space you land in is a matter of probability.

You may face a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You initially will have a quarter likelihood of landing on a specific tile in a row.

Then, you'll odds shift. So do you go for it, or do you click on a safer line first and try to make safer moves early? This is the push-your-luck gameplay on display in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing after you develop its rhythm.

Influencing Chance

The meta-layer is that your percentages can be shaped during an attempt by picking up teeth that modify the types of squares you're more likely to land on. For example, you could acquire 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 influencing the statistics optimally to have a higher chance at getting your desired outcome.
• In one run, I invested my attribute improvements toward brute force and selected all the teeth possible that would improve my probability of landing on monsters of that variety.
• On a different attempt, I constructed my hero around treasure chests and paired that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes every time I secured loot.

The strategic possibilities are not endless, but they are sufficient to engage with to let you manipulate the odds according to your strategy.

An Ever-Present Tension

Unsurprisingly, it remains a game of chance. There's always the possibility that you have a high probability to hit the preferred space but end up landing a monster that would deplete your last bit of health. All selections is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you clear a floor out and choose whether to continue selecting or to proceed to the following level instead of risking it all.

Tools such as explosive devices assist in minimizing the chance, as do some special skills. A particular character's special power, powered up by making four moves, enables you to select a vertical line rather than a horizontal row on a turn. If you play this strategically, you can save that move for a crucial point 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 its preview phase, and it has another update planned until the final game is released. Another playable adventurer and a additional end-level foe are scheduled to arrive sometime in January. The 1.0 release may not be far behind, but the game's developers haven't announced a concrete launch day yet.

A Parting Thought

No matter when its 1.0 launch occurs, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your radar. For the past week, I've been completely engrossed with it, uncovering each of hidden nuances and banking my earned gold per attempt to access a constant flow of permanent unlocks, such as additional heroes and items I can buy mid-attempt. I still haven't found the deepest level, and I get the feeling I will remain attempting that goal when the full version launches. I'm committed for the long haul.