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Having experienced more than 200 recent games this year, I am officially closing the book on 2025. My year-end list is live, and I feel content with the final results, despite being aware a host of stellar titles may have dropped under the radar. At this point, it's plan is to other than unwind, unplug a little, and maybe enjoy a pleasant stroll in the— ah crap, found another great game. And just like that, goodbye to my intentions!

An Early Contender Emerges

In my more off-hours play, usually reserved for a selection of unusual games, I've come across what might become my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive roguelike for Windows PC that reimagines a conventional dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of significant risk danger and payoff. Consider this a preview for the in-the-know: If you relish being aware of a game before it's cool, test out Sol Cesto so you can punch a hole in your wallet for unique titles.

A Tactical Dungeon-Crawling Innovation

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's unlike anything I'm familiar with. The premise is that you need to explore a dungeon, going down level by level to find the sun, which has gone missing from the fantasy world. In practice, this creates some recognizable genre framework. Choose an adventurer possessing unique attributes and skills, defeat enemies on every stage of foes, acquire some passive buffs (represented as teeth), and vanquish a few biome bosses. Simple enough!

The Unique Central System

The method by which you truly navigate a area, is unique. Each instance you begin a fresh level, you see a sixteen-square board of boxes. All spaces holds a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To proceed, you choose on one of the horizontal lines, but the exact space you end up on is determined by luck.

You might see a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You start with a one-in-four probability of hitting a specific tile in a row.

Subsequently, your probabilities change. The question becomes: Do you press your luck, or do you opt on a different row first and attempt some safer moves early? That's the tension between chance and safety at play in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing when you acquire a feel for it.

Shaping the Odds

The meta-layer is that your probabilities can be influenced during an attempt by picking up teeth that modify the types of squares you're more likely to land on. To illustrate, you could acquire a perk that will lower your chances of hitting a trap, but will also decrease the odds of finding a treasure chest too.

• Creating a build is about manipulating math to the utmost to have a better shot at landing where you want.
• On a particular session, I invested my stat upgrades toward melee prowess and chose every teeth possible that would increase my odds of being drawn to monsters with that damage type.
• During a separate session, I developed my adventurer around loot caches and paired that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes every time I secured loot.

The build options are limited, but they are sufficient to engage with to enable you to influence the odds the way you want.

An Ever-Present Tension

Naturally, at its heart, it's a game of chance. You constantly face the risk that you have an 80% chance to hit the desired tile but end up landing a foe that would deplete your final hit point. Each click is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you work through a stage and choose whether to continue selecting or when to move on to the following level rather than testing fate.

Tools such as explosive devices assist in minimizing the chance, as do some special skills. One hero's special power, powered up by making four moves, lets gamers to select a column instead of a horizontal row on a turn. If you play this move wisely, you can hold that ability for an optimal time to sidestep a dangerous choice. You'll find an astonishing amount of nuance in the simple act of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is remaining in early access, and it has another update planned before the complete edition is released. Another playable adventurer and a new boss are scheduled to arrive sometime in January. The 1.0 release likely won't be much later, but the studio haven't committed to a final date yet.

A Parting Endorsement

No matter when it's fully released, you might want to put Sol Cesto in your sights. I've been completely engrossed with it, uncovering each of small details and banking my earned gold in each run to reveal a continuous trickle of meta progression rewards, such as fresh adventurers and items I can buy during a run. As of now, I am yet to completed the dungeon, and I suspect I'll still be attempting that goal when the official release drops. Sign me up for the long haul.