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Having experienced in excess of 200 recent games this year, I'm formally wrapping things up on 2025. My year-end list is live, and I feel content with the final results, even knowing numerous stellar titles probably slipped under the radar. Now, there's job is to other than unwind, disconnect briefly, and maybe enjoy a refreshing hike in the— oh no, found another great game. So much for my plans!

An Early Front-Runner Appears

During my off-hours play, usually reserved for a handful of quirky titles, I've come across what could be my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that deconstructs a conventional labyrinth explorer into a chance-driven game of major consequence danger and payoff. Consider this a preview for the in-the-know: If you take pride in knowing about a game before it hits the mainstream, give Sol Cesto a try so you can punch a hole in your gaming budget.

A Strategic Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's unlike anything I'm familiar with. The concept is that you need to explore a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper to find the sun, which has disappeared from the fantasy world. Mechanically, that makes for some standard crawl progression. Select a character possessing unique attributes and skills, clear floor after floor of enemies, acquire some stat improvements (which are teeth), and vanquish a few stage-ending champions. Easy to grasp!

The Unique Central System

How you actually clear a dungeon room, however. Each instance you enter a new floor, you see a 4x4 grid of boxes. Each square features a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To proceed, you just select on one of the four rows, but the specific tile you land in is a matter of probability.

You may face a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You initially will have a 25% chance of hitting a specific tile in a row.

Then, you'll probabilities change. So do you take the risk, or do you opt on a different row first and try to make more cautious selections early? That's the tension between chance and safety at play in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating when you acquire a feel for it.

Manipulating Probability

The roguelike twist is that your percentages can be shaped through a run by picking up teeth that alter which objects you're more likely to land on. As an instance, you may obtain a perk that will reduce the probability of encountering a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of finding a treasure chest too.

• Creating a build is about manipulating math optimally to have a higher chance at getting your desired outcome.
• During one attempt, I put all my attribute improvements toward melee prowess and selected all the teeth possible that would increase my odds of attracting me toward monsters of that variety.
• In another run, I built my character around treasure chests and combined that with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters each time I secured loot.

The customization choices are somewhat constrained, but there's enough to experiment with to enable you to influence probabilities to your preference.

A Persistent Gamble

Unsurprisingly, 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 wind up hitting a foe that would deplete your last bit of health. Every move is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you work through a stage and choose whether to press onward or when to move on to the following level as opposed to testing fate.

Items like destructive ordnance aid in reducing the chance, as do some hero powers. An adventurer's signature move, activated once making four moves, lets gamers to click on a column instead of a row during that action. By employing this strategically, you can reserve that option for a crucial point to circumvent a perilous selection. It's a surprising level of strategy in the simple act of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is still in early access, and it has at least one more update scheduled before the full version is unleashed. Another playable adventurer and a new boss are expected to drop by the end of January. The 1.0 release likely won't be much later, but the creators haven't committed to a final date yet.

A Concluding Endorsement

No matter when the complete game arrives, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. For the past week, I've been completely engrossed with it, finding all of little secrets and banking my earned gold in each run to reveal a continuous trickle of meta progression rewards, such as additional heroes and items I can buy while playing. As of now, I am yet to reached the bottom, and I have a sense I'll still be working on that task when the full version launches. Sign me up for the long haul.