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After playing well over 200 fresh titles this year, I am officially closing the book on 2025. My year-end list is live, and I feel content with the final results, even knowing a host of excellent games may have dropped under the radar. Currently, my only plan is to but sit back, unplug a little, and maybe enjoy a refreshing hike in the— ah crap, discovered one more great game. So much for my plans!

A Surprising Contender Emerges

During my laid-back sessions, often set aside for a handful of quirky titles, I've discovered potentially my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar roguelike for Windows PC that reimagines a traditional labyrinth explorer into a probability-fueled game of high stakes peril and prize. Take this as a preview for the in-the-know: If you enjoy being aware of a game before it hits the mainstream, give Sol Cesto a try so you can punch a hole in your indie credit card.

A Calculated Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's different from everything I've previously experienced. The setup is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper to find the sun, which has gone missing from this mythical realm. In practice, this creates some standard crawl progression. Pick a hero with their own parameters and powers, clear floor after floor of enemies, collect some stat improvements (represented as teeth), and defeat a few biome bosses. Simple enough!

The Distinctive Gameplay Loop

The method by which you actually clear a dungeon room, though. Each instance you begin a fresh level, you're shown a 4x4 grid of boxes. Each square either contains a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To proceed, you simply click on one of the horizontal lines, but the specific tile you select is up to chance.

You might see a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You initially will have a one-in-four probability of selecting any given square in a row.

After that, the odds shift. So do you go for it, or do you choose on a safer line first and try to make safer moves early? Herein lies the risk-reward dynamic on display in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating once you get an understanding of it.

Manipulating Probability

The procedural hook is that your odds can be manipulated through a run by collecting teeth that change what things you're more attracted to. As an instance, you might get a perk that will reduce the probability of hitting a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of finding a reward too.

• Crafting a loadout is about influencing the statistics to the utmost to have a higher chance at getting your desired outcome.
• In one run, I focused my stat upgrades toward melee prowess and chose every teeth possible that would increase my odds of attracting me toward monsters of that variety.
• On a different attempt, I constructed my hero around treasure chests and paired that with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters whenever I claimed a reward.

The customization choices are not endless, but there's enough to engage with to enable you to influence probabilities the way you want.

An Ever-Present Risk

Unsurprisingly, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There's always the chance that you have an 80% chance to land on the preferred space but end up landing a foe that would deplete your remaining life. Each click is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you clear a floor out and choose whether to keep clicking or when to move on to the subsequent stage rather than pushing your luck.

Tools such as enemy-killing bombs help cut down the chance, just like some hero powers. An adventurer's signature move, charged after clearing four squares, enables you to select a column instead of a horizontal line on a turn. If you play your cards right, you can save that move for an optimal time to circumvent a perilous selection. There's a shocking degree of depth in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is still in development, and it has at least one more update to go before the full version is unleashed. A new character and a additional end-level foe are scheduled to arrive before the conclusion of January. The full launch may not be far behind, but the game's developers haven't announced a final date yet.

A Concluding Recommendation

Whenever the complete game arrives, you might want to put Sol Cesto in your sights. I've been completely engrossed with it, uncovering each of hidden nuances and banking my earned gold in each run to reveal a continuous trickle of persistent upgrades, including additional heroes and items purchasable mid-attempt. I still haven't found the deepest level, and I get the feeling I'll continue working on that task when the official release drops. Count me in for the entire experience.