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Having experienced more than 200 fresh titles this year, I'm formally turning the page on 2025. My best-of compilation is out in the world, and I am at peace with the concluding selections, accepting that plenty of stellar titles probably slipped through the cracks. Now, there's nothing for me to do except relax, unplug a little, and maybe enjoy a refreshing hike in the— ah crap, stumbled upon a amazing experience. There go my peaceful respite!

A Premature Front-Runner Appears

During my laid-back sessions, often set aside for a handful of quirky titles, I've come across potentially my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a conventional labyrinth explorer into a luck-based game of high stakes risk and reward. Consider this an early adopter's heads-up: If you enjoy being aware of a game before it's cool, test out Sol Cesto so you can burn a spot in your indie credit card.

A Strategic Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's unlike anything I'm familiar with. The premise is that you need to explore a dungeon, descending floor after floor to find the sun, which has vanished from its world. In practice, that makes for some familiar roguelike structure. Choose an adventurer possessing unique attributes and skills, clear floor after floor of monsters, collect some passive buffs (which are teeth), and vanquish a few biome bosses. Easy to grasp!

The Distinctive Central System

The method by which you effectively complete a dungeon room, is unique. Each instance you enter a new floor, the game presents a four-by-four matrix of boxes. Every tile either contains a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To proceed, you just select on one of the horizontal lines, but the specific tile you land in is a matter of probability.

You may face a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You start with a one-in-four probability of selecting any given square in a row.

After that, the chances are recalculated. So do you take the risk, or do you choose on a safer line first and try to make safer moves early? This is the tension between chance and safety in action in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing once you get a feel for it.

Influencing Chance

The roguelike twist is that your probabilities can be influenced through a run by gathering teeth that modify the types of squares you're more attracted to. For example, you might get a perk that will reduce the probability of landing on a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of getting a reward too.

• Crafting a loadout is about influencing the statistics to the utmost to have a improved likelihood at landing where you want.
• During one attempt, I invested my stat upgrades toward physical attack/defense and chose every teeth I could that would increase my odds of attracting me toward monsters with that damage type.
• In another run, I constructed my hero 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 engage with to allow you to tweak probabilities according to your strategy.

A Constant Gamble

Of course, it remains a game of chance. There remains the risk that you have an 80% chance to select the preferred space but wind up hitting a monster that would deplete your final hit point. All selections is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you clear a floor out and determine if to press onward or to advance to the subsequent stage as opposed to testing fate.

Items like destructive ordnance assist in minimizing the chance, just like some character abilities. An adventurer's special power, activated once making four moves, allows players to choose a column instead of a horizontal row for that move. Should you use your cards right, you can hold that ability for an optimal time to avoid a risky decision. It's a surprising degree of depth in the simple act of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is currently in its preview phase, and it has at least one more update to go until the full version is unleashed. An additional hero and a additional end-level foe are expected to drop by the end of January. The 1.0 release probably isn't long after, but the studio haven't set a specific release window yet.

A Parting Recommendation

Regardless of when the complete game arrives, you should consider put Sol Cesto in your sights. I've been positively obsessed with it, uncovering each of small details and storing my run rewards in each run to reveal a continuous trickle of permanent unlocks, including new characters and items available for acquisition during a run. As of now, I am yet to completed the dungeon, and I have a sense I'll continue working on that task when the official release drops. I'm committed for the entire experience.