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Having experienced well over 200 recent games this year, I'm formally closing the book on 2025. My year-end list is live, and I'm satisfied with the concluding selections, despite being aware plenty of stellar titles likely fell under the radar. 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— well, shoot, found another great game. There go my plans!

An Early Contender Emerges

In my more laid-back sessions, typically earmarked for a handful of quirky titles, I've encountered what might become my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar roguelike for Windows PC that deconstructs a classic dungeon crawler into a probability-fueled game of high stakes danger and payoff. Consider this an early adopter's heads-up: If you take pride in knowing about a game before it's cool, sample Sol Cesto so you can make a dent in your gaming budget.

A Strategic Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's unlike anything I've previously experienced. The premise is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, descending floor after floor to find the sun, which has gone missing from this mythical realm. When you play, that makes for some standard crawl progression. Select a character with their own stats and abilities, clear floor after floor of monsters, pick up some passive buffs (in the form of teeth), and defeat a few biome bosses. Straightforward, right!

The Novel Central System

The method by which you actually clear a dungeon room, however. Every time you begin a fresh level, you see a four-by-four matrix of boxes. All spaces holds a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To proceed, you choose on one of the horizontal lines, but which square you end up on is up to chance.

You might see a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You start with a one-in-four probability of hitting a specific tile in a row.

Subsequently, your probabilities change. So do you take the risk, or do you choose on a safer line first and attempt some more cautious selections early? This is the tension between chance and safety on display in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing once you get its rhythm.

Manipulating Probability

The procedural hook is that your odds can be manipulated over the course of a session by gathering teeth that change what things you're drawn toward. For example, you might get a perk that will reduce the probability of hitting a trap, but will also decrease the odds of landing on a reward too.

• Developing a strategy is about tweaking the numbers as best you can to have a improved likelihood at selecting the optimal square.
• During one attempt, I invested my attribute improvements toward brute force and picked as many teeth possible that would boost my chances of being drawn to monsters with that damage type.
• In another run, I developed my adventurer around treasure chests and coupled it with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies whenever I secured loot.

The customization choices are not endless, but they are sufficient to engage with to enable you to influence the odds according to your strategy.

An Ever-Present Risk

Naturally, at its heart, it's a game of chance. You constantly face the possibility that you have an 80% chance to hit the preferred space but ultimately choose on an enemy that would eliminate your final hit point. Each click is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you clear a floor out and decide when to press onward or to advance to the subsequent stage as opposed to risking it all.

Tools such as explosive devices assist in minimizing the chance, similar to some special skills. A particular character's special power, activated once clearing four squares, enables you to select a vertical line in place of a horizontal row during that action. Should you use your cards right, you can save that move for the right moment to circumvent a perilous selection. You'll find an astonishing amount of nuance in the simple act of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is still in development, and it has another update scheduled until the complete edition is launched. Another playable adventurer and a new boss are scheduled to arrive sometime in January. The 1.0 release probably isn't far behind, but the creators haven't set a final date yet.

A Final Thought

Regardless of when the complete game arrives, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your radar. I have been thoroughly captivated with it, uncovering each of small details and storing my run rewards in each run to unlock a steady stream of meta progression rewards, featuring new characters and items available for acquisition while playing. I still haven't reached the bottom, and I suspect I will remain pursuing that objective when 1.0 finally hits. Sign me up for the long haul.