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Having experienced more than 200 new releases this year, It's time to closing the book on 2025. My year-end list is published, and I feel content with the ultimate rankings, accepting that plenty of fantastic releases likely fell by the wayside. At this point, it's plan is to but sit back, take a short break, and possibly go for a refreshing hike in the— ah crap, stumbled upon a amazing experience. And just like that, goodbye to my peaceful respite!

An Early Favorite Surfaces

In my more laid-back sessions, typically earmarked for a few oddball curiosities, I've discovered what could be my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that deconstructs a conventional dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of significant risk peril and prize. Take this as an early adopter's heads-up: If you take pride discovering a game before it's popular, give Sol Cesto a try so you can burn a spot in your gaming budget.

A Tactical Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's a departure from all I've ever played. 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 this mythical realm. In practice, that makes for some familiar roguelike structure. Pick a hero with their own attributes and skills, clear floor after floor of monsters, collect some permanent upgrades (in the form of teeth), and vanquish a few biome bosses. Easy to grasp!

The Distinctive Core Mechanic

The way you effectively complete a chamber, however. Every time you start another stage, you're shown a four-by-four matrix of boxes. All spaces either contains a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To explore a room, you just select on one of the horizontal lines, but the exact space you end up on is determined by luck.

You may face a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You begin with a one-in-four probability of selecting any given square in a row.

Then, you'll odds shift. So do you take the risk, or do you choose on a safer line first and aim for less risky choices early? This is the push-your-luck gameplay on display in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing when you acquire a feel for it.

Manipulating Probability

The roguelike twist is that your odds can be manipulated through a run by gathering teeth that alter which objects you're more likely to land on. To illustrate, you may obtain a perk that will decrease your odds of hitting a trap, but will also decrease the odds of getting a reward too.

• Developing a strategy is about influencing the statistics optimally to have a improved likelihood at getting your desired outcome.
• During one attempt, I invested my attribute improvements toward melee prowess and selected all the teeth possible that would boost my chances of attracting me toward monsters of that variety.
• In another run, I built my character around reward boxes and combined that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes each time I opened a chest.

The strategic possibilities are not endless, but it provides ample to experiment with to allow you to tweak probabilities according to your strategy.

A Persistent Gamble

Naturally, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There's always the chance that you have an 80% chance to hit the preferred space but end up landing on an enemy that would deplete your last bit of health. Each click is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you navigate a level and determine if to press onward or to advance to the subsequent stage rather than testing fate.

Consumables including explosive devices aid in reducing the chance, as do some character abilities. An adventurer's signature move, activated once clearing four squares, enables you to choose a vertical column rather than a row for that move. By employing your cards right, you can hold that ability for a crucial point to circumvent a perilous selection. It's a surprising amount of nuance in the basic action of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is currently in early access, and it has at least one more update to go until the complete edition is released. An additional hero and a fresh guardian are planned for release sometime in January. The full launch likely won't be much later, but the game's developers haven't set a specific release window yet.

A Final Thought

No matter when the complete game arrives, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I have been positively obsessed with it, discovering its small details and saving my accumulated currency every session to access a constant flow of permanent unlocks, such as fresh adventurers and items I can buy mid-attempt. I still haven't reached the bottom, and I have a sense I will remain working on that task when 1.0 finally hits. Count me in for the long haul.