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After playing in excess of 200 recent games this year, It's time to wrapping things up on 2025. My year-end list is published, and I am at peace with the final results, despite being aware plenty of stellar titles probably slipped under the radar. Currently, my only plan is to except relax, unplug a little, and maybe enjoy a refreshing hike in the— ah crap, found another great game. So much for my intentions!

An Early Front-Runner Appears

With my off-hours play, usually reserved for a handful of quirky titles, I've discovered what could be my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a conventional dungeon crawler into a probability-fueled game of major consequence danger and payoff. Take this as a hipster's insider tip: If you enjoy discovering a game before it's popular, sample Sol Cesto so you can burn a spot in your wallet for unique titles.

A Strategic Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's unlike anything I'm familiar with. The concept is that you must venture into a dungeon, going down level by level to find the sun, which has disappeared from its world. In practice, this results in some standard crawl progression. Choose an adventurer possessing unique parameters and powers, clear floor after floor of enemies, pick up some stat improvements (represented as teeth), and overcome a few biome bosses. Easy to grasp!

The Distinctive Central System

How you truly navigate a area, though. Whenever you begin a fresh level, the game presents a four-by-four matrix of boxes. All spaces features a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To explore a room, you just select on one of the four rows, but the exact space you land in is determined by luck.

You may face a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You start with a quarter likelihood of landing on a particular space in a row.

After that, the chances are recalculated. So do you take the risk, or do you choose on a alternative option first and attempt some safer moves early? That's the tension between chance and safety at play in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing after you develop its rhythm.

Shaping the Odds

The meta-layer is that your probabilities can be influenced during an attempt by gathering teeth that change what things you're more likely to land on. For example, you might get a perk that will decrease your odds of hitting a trap, but will also decrease the odds of landing on a reward too.

• Developing a strategy is about manipulating math as best you can to have a better shot at selecting the optimal square.
• During one attempt, I invested my attribute improvements toward melee prowess and selected all the teeth I could that would increase my odds of landing on monsters with that damage type.
• During a separate session, I constructed my hero around treasure chests and combined that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes each time I secured loot.

The customization choices are somewhat constrained, but there's enough to experiment with to let you manipulate numbers the way you want.

A Persistent Gamble

Unsurprisingly, it's still a game of chance. There remains the risk that you have an 80% chance to land on the square you want but ultimately choose a foe that would eliminate your remaining life. Each click is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you navigate a level and determine if to keep clicking or to advance to the next floor instead of risking it all.

Consumables including explosive devices help cut down the chance, as do some hero powers. One hero's special power, charged after clearing four squares, lets gamers to select a vertical line instead of a row on a turn. If you play this strategically, you can reserve that option for a crucial point to circumvent a perilous selection. You'll find an astonishing degree of depth in the basic action of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is still in development, and it has a final update planned until the full version is unleashed. An additional hero and a additional end-level foe are planned for release by the end of January. The official version may not be far behind, but the game's developers haven't committed to a final date yet.

A Final Endorsement

Regardless of when its 1.0 launch occurs, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your radar. I've been thoroughly captivated with it, uncovering each of hidden nuances and storing my run rewards every session to unlock a steady stream of persistent upgrades, featuring new characters and items I can buy during a run. I still haven't reached the bottom, and I have a sense I'll still be pursuing that objective when the full version launches. I'm committed for the long haul.