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After playing more than 200 recent games this year, I'm formally wrapping things up on 2025. My annual roundup is live, and I am at peace with the concluding selections, accepting that a host of stellar titles may have dropped by the wayside. At this point, it's job is to but sit back, take a short break, and possibly go for a refreshing hike in the— oh no, discovered one more great game. And just like that, goodbye to my peaceful respite!

A Surprising Favorite Surfaces

In my more casual gaming time, typically earmarked for a selection of unusual games, I've come across what might become my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual roguelike for Windows PC that reimagines a traditional labyrinth explorer into a luck-based game of significant risk peril and prize. View this an early adopter's heads-up: If you enjoy in knowing about a game before it's cool, sample Sol Cesto so you can make a dent in your wallet for unique titles.

A Calculated Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's a departure from all I've ever played. The setup is that you must venture into a dungeon, going down level by level in search of the sun, which has gone missing from its world. In practice, this results in some recognizable genre framework. Choose an adventurer possessing unique attributes and skills, defeat enemies on every stage of enemies, acquire some stat improvements (represented as teeth), and vanquish a few stage-ending champions. Straightforward, right!

The Distinctive Gameplay Loop

How you effectively complete a area, though. Each instance you begin a fresh level, you're shown a four-by-four matrix of boxes. Each square holds a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To make a move, you choose on one of the horizontal lines, but which square you end up on is a matter of probability.

You might see a row with multiple foes, 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.

Subsequently, your chances are recalculated. The question becomes: Do you go for it, or do you click on a different row first and attempt some less risky choices early? Herein lies the tension between chance and safety on display in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing when you acquire its rhythm.

Influencing Chance

The procedural hook is that your percentages can be shaped during an attempt by picking up teeth that modify the types of squares you're more attracted to. For example, you could acquire a perk that will lower your chances of encountering a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of finding a reward too.

• Creating a build is about influencing the statistics optimally to have a higher chance at landing where you want.
• During one attempt, I focused my attribute improvements toward brute force and chose every teeth possible that would boost my chances of landing on monsters with that damage type.
• During a separate session, I built my character around loot caches and combined that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes each time I secured loot.

The customization choices are somewhat constrained, but they are sufficient to experiment with to enable you to influence numbers according to your strategy.

An Ever-Present Tension

Of course, at its heart, it's a game of chance. You constantly face the chance that you have an 80% chance to hit the preferred space but end up landing on an enemy that would eliminate your last bit of health. All selections is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you clear a floor out and decide when to press onward or when to move on to the subsequent stage rather than risking it all.

Tools such as explosive devices assist in minimizing the chance, similar to some character abilities. A particular character's unique ability, activated once selecting four tiles, allows players to click on a vertical column instead of a horizontal row for that move. Should you use your cards right, you can reserve that option for a crucial point to avoid a risky decision. It's a surprising level of strategy in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is remaining in development, and it has a final update planned until the final game is unleashed. An additional hero and a fresh guardian are planned for release before the conclusion of January. The full launch may not be far behind, but the studio haven't committed to a concrete launch day yet.

A Concluding Thought

No matter when it's fully released, you might want to put Sol Cesto in your sights. For the past week, I've been positively obsessed with it, uncovering each of hidden nuances and banking my earned gold in each run to access a constant flow of persistent upgrades, such as new characters and items purchasable while playing. As of now, I am yet to found the deepest level, and I suspect I'll still be attempting that goal when the full version launches. I'm committed for the entire experience.