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Following my time with in excess of 200 new releases this year, I'm formally closing the book on 2025. My year-end list is published, and I feel content with the ultimate rankings, accepting that a host of excellent games probably slipped through the cracks. Now, there's nothing for me to do except relax, unplug a little, and perhaps take a nice walk in the— oh no, stumbled upon a great game. There go my peaceful respite!

A Surprising Contender Emerges

In my more off-hours play, typically earmarked for a selection of unusual games, I've come across what might become my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive roguelike for Windows PC that breaks down a classic dungeon crawler into a luck-based game of major consequence danger and payoff. Consider this a preview for the in-the-know: If you relish being aware of 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 tactical roguelike that's unlike anything I've previously experienced. The premise is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, descending floor after floor on a quest for the sun, which has gone missing from the fantasy world. When you play, this results in some standard crawl progression. Select a character possessing unique attributes and skills, clear floor after floor of enemies, collect some stat improvements (which are teeth), and vanquish a few stage-ending champions. Simple enough!

The Distinctive Central System

The way you truly navigate a area, however. Every time you start another stage, you're shown a four-by-four matrix of boxes. Each square either contains a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To make a move, you just select on one of the four rows, but the specific tile you land in is up to chance.

You may face a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You initially will have a 25% chance of selecting a particular space in a row.

After that, the chances are recalculated. So do you press your luck, or do you click on a safer line first and attempt some more cautious selections early? This is the tension between chance and safety on display in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating when you acquire its rhythm.

Shaping the Odds

The procedural hook is that your odds can be manipulated over the course of a session by gathering teeth that modify the types of squares you're more likely to land on. For example, you might get a perk that will lower your chances of hitting a trap, but will also decrease the odds of finding a treasure chest too.

• Crafting a loadout is about influencing the statistics optimally to have a improved likelihood at landing where you want.
• During one attempt, I put all my stat upgrades toward physical attack/defense and chose every teeth I could that would improve my probability of attracting me toward monsters of that variety.
• On a different attempt, I built my character around loot caches and combined that with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters whenever I claimed a reward.

The customization choices are not endless, but it provides ample to experiment with to allow you to tweak the odds the way you want.

A Constant Gamble

Unsurprisingly, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There's always the chance that you have an 80% chance to select the square you want but wind up hitting on an enemy that would take out your final hit point. Every move is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you navigate a level and decide when to press onward or when to move on to the subsequent stage rather than risking it all.

Items like destructive ordnance help cut down the chance, just like some hero powers. One hero's unique ability, charged after making four moves, lets gamers to select a vertical line instead of a horizontal row on a turn. By employing this move wisely, you can hold that ability for an optimal time to circumvent a perilous selection. You'll find an astonishing level of strategy in the simple act of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is still in development, and it has at least one more update planned before the complete edition is unleashed. A new character and a additional end-level foe are expected to drop sometime in January. The full launch likely won't be long after, but the creators haven't announced a final date yet.

A Final Endorsement

Regardless of when it's fully released, you should consider put Sol Cesto in your sights. I've been positively obsessed with it, discovering its small details and saving my accumulated currency in each run to access a constant flow of permanent unlocks, such as fresh adventurers and items purchasable during a run. I still haven't reached the bottom, and I have a sense I'll still be working on that task when the full version launches. Sign me up for the complete journey.