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Having experienced more than 200 fresh titles this year, I am officially wrapping things up on 2025. My year-end list is out in the world, and I am at peace with the concluding selections, accepting that plenty of excellent games likely fell by the wayside. At this point, it's nothing for me to do but sit back, unplug a little, and possibly go for a nice walk in the— oh no, stumbled upon a great game. And just like that, goodbye to my intentions!

An Early Contender Emerges

During my casual gaming time, often set aside for a handful of quirky titles, I've discovered what might become my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a classic dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of significant risk peril and prize. Consider this a preview for the in-the-know: If you take pride being aware of a game before it's popular, give Sol Cesto a try so you can punch a hole in your gaming budget.

A Tactical Dungeon-Crawling Innovation

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's a departure from all I've previously experienced. The concept is that you need to explore a dungeon, descending floor after floor in search of the sun, which has gone missing from this mythical realm. Mechanically, that makes for some standard crawl progression. Pick a hero with their own stats and abilities, clear floor after floor of enemies, acquire some passive buffs (in the form of teeth), and defeat a few stage-ending champions. Simple enough!

The Novel Central System

The method by which you truly navigate a area, however. Every time you enter a new floor, the game presents a four-by-four matrix of boxes. All spaces either contains a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To make a move, you choose on one of the four rows, but the exact space you land in is a matter of probability.

You might see a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You begin with a 25% chance of landing on any given square in a row.

Then, you'll chances are recalculated. The question becomes: Do you go for it, or do you click on a alternative option first and aim for safer moves early? Herein lies the tension between chance and safety at play in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating once you get a feel for it.

Influencing Chance

The meta-layer is that your odds can be manipulated over the course of a session by gathering teeth that change what things you're more attracted to. For example, you may obtain a perk that will lower your chances of encountering a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of landing on a treasure chest too.

• Creating a build is about manipulating math to the utmost to have a higher chance at getting your desired outcome.
• In one run, I focused my stat upgrades toward melee prowess and selected all the teeth possible that would increase my odds of being drawn to monsters aligned with that strength.
• In another run, I built my character around reward boxes and coupled it with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters every time I opened a chest.

The build options are limited, but there's enough to work with to allow you to tweak probabilities the way you want.

A Constant Tension

Naturally, it remains a game of chance. You constantly face the chance that you have a high probability to land on the preferred space but wind up hitting on an enemy that would take out your remaining life. Each click is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you navigate a level and choose whether to keep clicking or when to move on to the following level instead of testing fate.

Consumables including explosive devices assist in minimizing the chance, just like some special skills. One hero's special power, activated once making four moves, allows players to select a vertical column instead of a horizontal row for that move. By employing your cards right, you can hold that ability for a crucial point to sidestep a dangerous choice. It's a surprising degree of depth in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is currently in early access, and it has at least one more update planned until the complete edition is launched. Another playable adventurer and a fresh guardian are planned for release by the end of January. The 1.0 release may not be much later, but the studio haven't committed to a final date yet.

A Concluding Recommendation

Regardless of when the complete game arrives, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your radar. For the past week, I've been completely engrossed with it, uncovering each of small details and saving my accumulated currency in each run to reveal a continuous trickle of meta progression rewards, such as fresh adventurers and items I can buy while playing. To this day, I have not completed the dungeon, and I get the feeling I'll continue attempting that goal when the official release drops. Sign me up for the complete journey.