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Having experienced well over 200 recent games this year, It's time to turning the page on 2025. My annual roundup is out in the world, and I'm satisfied with the ultimate rankings, despite being aware numerous excellent games probably slipped by the wayside. At this point, it's plan is to but sit back, disconnect briefly, and possibly go for a nice walk in the— ah crap, found another brilliant title. There go my peaceful respite!

A Premature Favorite Surfaces

During my laid-back sessions, often set aside for a few oddball curiosities, I've encountered what could be my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that reimagines a traditional dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of high stakes risk and reward. Consider this a hipster's insider tip: If you take pride being aware of a game before it's cool, give Sol Cesto a try so you can burn a spot in your gaming budget.

A Strategic Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's a departure from all I'm familiar with. 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 its world. When you play, this results in some familiar roguelike structure. Select a character with their own attributes and skills, clear floor after floor of foes, collect some passive buffs (represented as teeth), and defeat a few stage-ending champions. Easy to grasp!

The Unique Gameplay Loop

The method by which you effectively complete a chamber, however. Every time you enter a new floor, the game presents a sixteen-square board of boxes. Every tile features a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To make a move, you simply click on one of the four rows, but the specific tile you land in is determined by luck.

You might see a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You begin with a one-in-four probability of hitting any given square in a row.

After that, the probabilities change. So do you go for it, or do you click on a alternative option first and try to make more cautious selections early? This is the risk-reward dynamic at play in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing after you develop an understanding of it.

Influencing Chance

The roguelike twist is that your odds can be manipulated over the course of a session by collecting teeth that modify the types of squares you're more likely to land on. For example, you might get a perk that will reduce the probability of hitting a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of getting a treasure chest too.

• Creating a build is about manipulating math optimally to have a improved likelihood at getting your desired outcome.
• On a particular session, I invested my stat upgrades toward physical attack/defense and picked as many teeth possible that would improve my probability of being drawn to monsters aligned with that strength.
• In another run, I constructed my hero around treasure chests and combined that with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters whenever I opened a chest.

The customization choices are somewhat constrained, but there's enough to engage with to let you manipulate numbers to your preference.

An Ever-Present Tension

Naturally, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There remains the chance that you have a high probability to land on the preferred space but wind up hitting a foe that would deplete your final hit point. All selections is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you clear a floor out and decide when to press onward or when to move on to the following level instead of risking it all.

Items like destructive ordnance aid in reducing the chance, just like some hero powers. A particular character's unique ability, powered up by selecting four tiles, allows players to select a vertical line instead of a horizontal row during that action. Should you use your cards right, you can save that move for the right moment to avoid a risky decision. You'll find an astonishing level of strategy in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is still in development, and it has at least one more update to go until the final game is unleashed. An additional hero and a new boss are planned for release by the end of January. The official version probably isn't much later, but the game's developers haven't announced a specific release window yet.

A Final Endorsement

No matter when it's fully released, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your radar. I have been positively obsessed with it, uncovering each of little secrets and storing my run rewards per attempt to access a constant flow of persistent upgrades, including new characters and items purchasable during a run. To this day, I have not reached the bottom, and I have a sense I will remain attempting that goal when the full version launches. Count me in for the complete journey.