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Following my time with in excess of 200 fresh titles this year, It's time to wrapping things up on 2025. My annual roundup is published, and I'm satisfied with the ultimate rankings, even knowing plenty of fantastic releases likely fell through the cracks. Currently, my only job is to but sit back, disconnect briefly, and maybe enjoy a pleasant stroll in the— oh no, found another great game. And just like that, goodbye to my intentions!

A Premature Front-Runner Appears

During my laid-back sessions, typically earmarked for a selection of unusual games, I've discovered potentially my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual roguelike for Windows PC that breaks down a conventional labyrinth explorer into a luck-based game of high stakes risk and reward. Consider this a hipster's insider tip: If you relish discovering a game before it's popular, test out Sol Cesto so you can punch a hole in your gaming budget.

A Calculated Dungeon-Crawling Innovation

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's unlike anything I'm familiar with. 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 the fantasy world. Mechanically, this results in some recognizable genre framework. Select a character possessing unique attributes and skills, defeat enemies on every stage of foes, acquire some stat improvements (which are teeth), and defeat a few area guardians. Simple enough!

The Unique Central System

How you actually clear a dungeon room, though. Every time you enter a new floor, the game presents a 4x4 grid of boxes. All spaces either contains a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To explore a room, you simply click on one of the horizontal lines, but which square you land in is determined by luck.

You might see a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You begin with a quarter likelihood of selecting any given square in a row.

Then, you'll chances are recalculated. So do you take the risk, or do you choose on a different row first and try to make safer moves early? This is the push-your-luck gameplay at play in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing when you acquire its rhythm.

Influencing Chance

The procedural hook is that your probabilities can be influenced over the course of a session by picking up teeth that alter which objects you're drawn toward. To illustrate, you could acquire a perk that will decrease your odds of encountering a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of finding a treasure chest too.

• Developing a strategy is about manipulating math as best you can to have a higher chance at landing where you want.
• During one attempt, I invested my power boosts toward physical attack/defense and chose every teeth possible that would increase my odds of landing on monsters aligned with that strength.
• During a separate session, I built my character around reward boxes and paired that with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies every time I secured loot.

The strategic possibilities are limited, but there's enough to work with to enable you to influence numbers to your preference.

A Constant Risk

Unsurprisingly, it remains a game of chance. There remains the risk that you have a likely outcome to hit the desired tile but ultimately choose a foe that would deplete your last bit of health. Each click is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you work through a stage and decide when to keep clicking or when to move on to the next floor instead of risking it all.

Consumables including explosive devices assist in minimizing the chance, similar to some hero powers. A particular character's unique ability, charged after selecting four tiles, enables you to choose a vertical line in place of a horizontal line on a turn. By employing your cards right, you can hold that ability for the right moment to circumvent a perilous selection. There's a shocking level of strategy in the simple act of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is still in early access, and it has a final update scheduled until the final game is launched. Another playable adventurer and a fresh guardian are planned for release by the end of January. The official version likely won't be far behind, but the studio haven't announced a final date yet.

A Parting Thought

Whenever it's fully released, you ought to put Sol Cesto in your sights. For the past week, I've been completely engrossed with it, finding all of small details and banking my earned gold in each run to access a constant flow of persistent upgrades, including additional heroes and items available for acquisition during a run. I still haven't reached the bottom, and I suspect I will remain attempting that goal when 1.0 finally hits. Sign me up for the complete journey.