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After playing well over 200 new releases this year, I'm formally turning the page on 2025. My annual roundup is out in the world, and I am at peace with the ultimate rankings, accepting that numerous excellent games may have dropped through the cracks. Now, there's plan is to other than unwind, take a short break, and possibly go for a refreshing hike in the— oh no, stumbled upon a amazing experience. So much for my intentions!

A Premature Favorite Surfaces

In my more casual gaming time, often set aside for a few oddball curiosities, I've encountered what might become my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive roguelike for Windows PC that deconstructs a classic dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of high stakes danger and payoff. Take this as a preview for the in-the-know: If you relish discovering a game before it's popular, sample Sol Cesto so you can punch a hole in your gaming budget.

A Tactical Dungeon-Crawling Innovation

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's different from everything I've previously experienced. The premise is that you must venture into a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper to find the sun, which has disappeared from this mythical realm. When you play, this results in some standard crawl progression. Select a character who has stats and abilities, clear floor after floor of monsters, pick up some passive buffs (represented as teeth), and defeat a few area guardians. Easy to grasp!

The Novel Core Mechanic

The method by which you actually clear a area, though. Every time you begin a fresh level, the game presents a four-by-four matrix of boxes. Every tile either contains a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To explore a room, you just select on one of the four rows, but the exact space you land in is determined by luck.

You could encounter a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You begin with a 25% chance of hitting a particular space in a row.

Subsequently, your chances are recalculated. The question becomes: Do you take the risk, or do you click on a different row first and aim for safer moves early? This is the risk-reward dynamic in action in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing after you develop an understanding of it.

Shaping the Odds

The roguelike twist is that your percentages can be shaped over the course of a session by collecting teeth that change what things you're more attracted to. As an instance, you might get a perk that will reduce the probability of landing on a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of finding a treasure chest too.

• Creating a build is about manipulating math as best you can to have a better shot at landing where you want.
• During one attempt, I invested my attribute improvements toward brute force and selected all the teeth possible that would increase my odds of being drawn to monsters with that damage type.
• On a different attempt, I developed my adventurer around treasure chests and paired that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes every time I secured loot.

The strategic possibilities are somewhat constrained, but there's enough to work with to enable you to influence numbers to your preference.

An Ever-Present Tension

Unsurprisingly, it's still a game of chance. There's always the chance that you have a likely outcome to hit the square you want but wind up hitting a monster that would deplete your final hit point. All selections is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you work through a stage and decide when to continue selecting or to proceed to the next floor as opposed to testing fate.

Items like explosive devices assist in minimizing the chance, just like some character abilities. An adventurer's unique ability, activated once making four moves, enables you to select a vertical column instead of a row during that action. Should you use this move wisely, you can hold that ability for an optimal time to sidestep a dangerous choice. It's a surprising degree of depth in the simple act of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is remaining in early access, and it has at least one more update scheduled before the complete edition is launched. An additional hero and a new boss are scheduled to arrive by the end of January. The 1.0 release likely won't be far behind, but the game's developers haven't announced a final date yet.

A Parting Thought

Regardless of when its 1.0 launch occurs, you should consider put Sol Cesto on your radar. For the past week, I've been completely engrossed with it, finding all of little secrets and saving my accumulated currency in each run to unlock a steady stream of permanent unlocks, including fresh adventurers and items purchasable during a run. To this day, I have not found the deepest level, and I have a sense I'll still be attempting that goal when the official release drops. I'm committed for the complete journey.