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After playing well over 200 fresh titles this year, It's time to turning the page on 2025. My year-end list is live, and I am at peace with the ultimate rankings, despite being aware plenty of excellent games may have dropped through the cracks. Now, there's plan is to except relax, take a short break, and perhaps take a nice walk in the— well, shoot, stumbled upon a brilliant title. And just like that, goodbye to my plans!

A Surprising Front-Runner Appears

With my laid-back sessions, often set aside for a few oddball curiosities, I've discovered potentially my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual roguelike for Windows PC that breaks down a classic dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of significant risk risk and reward. Consider this a hipster's insider tip: If you relish in knowing about a game before it hits the mainstream, give Sol Cesto a try so you can burn a spot in your indie credit card.

A Tactical Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's different from everything I've previously experienced. 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 this mythical realm. When you play, this results in some recognizable genre framework. Choose an adventurer possessing unique attributes and skills, fight through each level of foes, acquire some stat improvements (which are teeth), and vanquish a few stage-ending champions. Easy to grasp!

The Unique Central System

The method by which you truly navigate a area, however. Each instance you enter a new floor, the game presents a 4x4 grid of boxes. Each square features a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To proceed, you just select on one of the four rows, but the exact space you land in is up to chance.

You might see a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You begin with a one-in-four probability of landing on any given square in a row.

Then, you'll chances are recalculated. The question becomes: Do you press your luck, or do you opt on a safer line first and try to make safer moves early? Herein lies the tension between chance and safety at play in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing after you develop an understanding of it.

Manipulating Probability

The roguelike twist is that your percentages can be shaped during an attempt by picking up teeth that alter which objects you're drawn toward. For example, you may obtain a perk that will lower your chances of landing on a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of finding a reward too.

• Crafting a loadout is about tweaking the numbers to the utmost to have a better shot at landing where you want.
• During one attempt, I put all my attribute improvements toward physical attack/defense and selected all the teeth possible that would boost my chances of attracting me toward monsters with that damage type.
• During a separate session, I constructed my hero around loot caches and combined that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes whenever I opened a chest.

The build options are limited, but it provides ample to experiment with to allow you to tweak the odds to your preference.

A Constant Gamble

Unsurprisingly, it's still a game of chance. There's always the risk that you have a likely outcome to land on the desired tile but wind up hitting on an enemy that would take out your remaining life. Each click is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you clear a floor out and decide when to continue selecting or to advance to the subsequent stage as opposed to testing fate.

Tools such as explosive devices aid in reducing the chance, similar to some hero powers. One hero's special power, activated once selecting four tiles, lets gamers to choose a vertical column rather than a row on a turn. If you play this move wisely, you can hold that ability for the right moment to avoid a risky decision. You'll find an astonishing level of strategy in the simple act of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is currently in early access, and it has a final update scheduled until the full version is unleashed. Another playable adventurer and a additional end-level foe are expected to drop before the conclusion of January. The full launch likely won't be long after, but the creators haven't committed to a final date yet.

A Parting Endorsement

Whenever the complete game arrives, you should consider put Sol Cesto in your sights. For the past week, I've been positively obsessed with it, discovering its small details and banking my earned gold in each run to access a constant flow of persistent upgrades, featuring fresh adventurers and items available for acquisition during a run. As of now, I am yet to completed the dungeon, and I have a sense I'll continue working on that task when the full version launches. Count me in for the long haul.