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After playing in excess of 200 fresh titles this year, I'm formally wrapping things up on 2025. My annual roundup is published, and I feel content with the concluding selections, accepting that a host of fantastic releases likely fell through the cracks. At this point, it's nothing for me to do except relax, disconnect briefly, and perhaps take a pleasant stroll in the— well, shoot, discovered one more great game. So much for my intentions!

An Early Front-Runner Appears

In my more off-hours play, often set aside for a few oddball curiosities, I've discovered what might become my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive roguelike for Windows PC that reimagines a traditional labyrinth explorer into a luck-based game of high stakes danger and payoff. Take this as a hipster's insider tip: If you enjoy in knowing about a game before it's popular, give Sol Cesto a try so you can punch a hole in your gaming budget.

A Calculated Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's unlike anything I'm familiar with. The premise is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, going down level by level in search of the sun, which has disappeared from the fantasy world. When you play, this results in some standard crawl progression. Select a character with their own parameters and powers, defeat enemies on every stage of foes, pick up some stat improvements (represented as teeth), and overcome a few area guardians. Easy to grasp!

The Distinctive Gameplay Loop

The way you effectively complete a dungeon room, however. Each instance you enter a new floor, the game presents a 4x4 grid of boxes. Every tile holds a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To proceed, you just select on one of the horizontal lines, but which square you end up on is determined by luck.

You might see a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You initially will have a one-in-four probability of hitting a particular space in a row.

Then, you'll chances are recalculated. So do you take the risk, or do you choose on a safer line first and aim for less risky choices early? Herein lies the risk-reward dynamic on display in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating after you develop an understanding of it.

Influencing Chance

The meta-layer is that your probabilities can be influenced during an attempt by collecting teeth that modify the types of squares you're more attracted to. As an instance, you could acquire a perk that will decrease your odds of hitting a trap, but will also decrease the odds of landing on a treasure chest too.

• Creating a build is about tweaking the numbers to the utmost to have a higher chance at landing where you want.
• In one run, I focused my stat upgrades toward physical attack/defense and selected all the teeth possible that would increase my odds of being drawn to monsters of that variety.
• On a different attempt, I constructed my hero around reward boxes and coupled it with a perk that would debuff nearby foes every time I opened a chest.

The build options are somewhat constrained, but it provides ample to experiment with to enable you to influence probabilities according to your strategy.

A Persistent Risk

Unsurprisingly, at its heart, it's a game of chance. You constantly face the chance that you have an 80% chance to land on the desired tile but end up landing a monster that would take out your last bit of health. Each click is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you work through a stage and choose whether to press onward or when to move on to the subsequent stage as opposed to pushing your luck.

Tools such as explosive devices aid in reducing the chance, just like some character abilities. A particular character's unique ability, powered up by making four moves, allows players to select a column rather than a horizontal line for that move. Should you use your cards right, you can reserve that option for the right moment to avoid a risky decision. You'll find an astonishing amount of nuance in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is currently in its preview phase, and it has another update planned until the final game is unleashed. Another playable adventurer and a additional end-level foe are planned for release by the end of January. The full launch probably isn't far behind, but the studio haven't set a concrete launch day yet.

A Parting Recommendation

Whenever it's fully released, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your radar. I've been thoroughly captivated with it, finding all of small details and storing my run rewards in each run to access a constant flow of meta progression rewards, such as fresh adventurers and items I can buy during a run. I still haven't completed the dungeon, and I have a sense I'll still be working on that task when 1.0 finally hits. Sign me up for the long haul.