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Following my time with well over 200 fresh titles this year, I am officially turning the page on 2025. My best-of compilation is out in the world, and I'm satisfied with the final results, accepting that a host of fantastic releases may have dropped by the wayside. Currently, my only plan is to other than unwind, disconnect briefly, and maybe enjoy a nice walk in the— oh no, discovered one more brilliant title. There go my peaceful respite!

A Surprising Front-Runner Appears

During my laid-back sessions, often set aside for a few oddball curiosities, I've come across what might become my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a traditional labyrinth explorer into a chance-driven game of significant risk risk and reward. View this a hipster's insider tip: If you take pride in knowing about a game before it's cool, give Sol Cesto a try so you can make a dent in your indie credit card.

A Calculated Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's unlike anything I've ever played. The premise is that you must venture into a dungeon, descending floor after floor on a quest for the sun, which has disappeared from the fantasy world. When you play, that makes for some standard crawl progression. Choose an adventurer who has parameters and powers, defeat enemies on every stage of foes, pick up some permanent upgrades (which are teeth), and vanquish a few stage-ending champions. Simple enough!

The Novel Gameplay Loop

The way you truly navigate a dungeon room, though. Whenever you start another stage, you're shown a 4x4 grid of boxes. Every tile either contains a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To proceed, you choose on one of the four rows, but which square you end up on is determined by luck.

You may face a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You start with a one-in-four probability of selecting a specific tile in a row.

Then, you'll odds shift. The question becomes: Do you take the risk, or do you choose on a safer line first and try to make safer moves early? Herein lies the risk-reward dynamic in action in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing once you get an understanding of it.

Shaping the Odds

The procedural hook is that your probabilities can be influenced through a run by picking up teeth that modify the types of squares you're more likely to land on. To illustrate, you might get a perk that will lower your chances of landing on a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of finding a treasure chest too.

• Crafting a loadout is about influencing the statistics as best you can to have a higher chance at selecting the optimal square.
• In one run, I invested my stat upgrades toward physical attack/defense and picked as many teeth I could that would boost my chances of landing on monsters aligned with that strength.
• During a separate session, I developed my adventurer around reward boxes and coupled it with a perk that would debuff nearby foes whenever I secured loot.

The build options are somewhat constrained, but there's enough to work with to enable you to influence probabilities the way you want.

A Persistent Gamble

Unsurprisingly, it's still a game of chance. There remains the chance that you have an 80% chance to select the desired tile but ultimately choose a foe that would deplete your final hit point. Each click is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you clear a floor out and determine if to keep clicking or to proceed to the following level rather than risking it all.

Consumables including explosive devices help cut down the chance, similar to some special skills. An adventurer's special power, powered up by selecting four tiles, allows players to select a column instead of a row on a turn. If you play your cards right, you can hold that ability for a crucial point to circumvent a perilous selection. It's a surprising amount of nuance in the basic action of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is still in its preview phase, and it has another update planned until the final game is unleashed. A new character and a fresh guardian are expected to drop by the end of January. The full launch may not be far behind, but the creators haven't committed to a final date yet.

A Parting Recommendation

Regardless of when it's fully released, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I've been positively obsessed with it, uncovering each of little secrets and storing my run rewards in each run to unlock a steady stream of meta progression rewards, including additional heroes and items purchasable mid-attempt. I still haven't reached the bottom, and I suspect I'll continue pursuing that objective when the official release drops. Sign me up for the complete journey.