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Following my time with in excess of 200 new releases this year, I am officially closing the book on 2025. My annual roundup is out in the world, and I am at peace with the ultimate rankings, accepting that a host of stellar titles probably slipped under the radar. Now, there's job is to except relax, unplug a little, and maybe enjoy a refreshing hike in the— well, shoot, stumbled upon a amazing experience. So much for my plans!

An Early Favorite Surfaces

In my more laid-back sessions, often set aside for a selection of unusual games, I've come across potentially my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that reimagines a conventional dungeon crawler into a luck-based game of significant risk danger and payoff. Consider this a preview for the in-the-know: If you enjoy being aware of a game before it hits the mainstream, sample Sol Cesto so you can burn a spot in your gaming budget.

A Tactical Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's unlike anything I've previously experienced. The concept is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper in search of the sun, which has vanished from the fantasy world. Mechanically, this creates some familiar roguelike structure. Pick a hero who has stats and abilities, clear floor after floor of foes, collect some passive buffs (in the form of teeth), and defeat a few stage-ending champions. Easy to grasp!

The Unique Central System

The way you effectively complete a chamber, however. Whenever you start another stage, you're shown a sixteen-square board of boxes. Each square holds a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To explore a room, you simply click on one of the four rows, but which square you land in is determined by luck.

You might see a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You begin with a one-in-four probability of landing on a specific tile in a row.

After that, the odds shift. The question becomes: Do you press your luck, or do you choose on a different row first and attempt some more cautious selections early? That's the push-your-luck gameplay at play in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating once you get a feel for it.

Manipulating Probability

The roguelike twist is that your probabilities can be influenced over the course of a session by picking up teeth that change what things you're more likely to land on. As an instance, you could acquire a perk that will lower your chances of landing on a trap, but will also decrease the odds of getting a treasure chest too.

• Crafting a loadout is about tweaking the numbers as best you can to have a higher chance at landing where you want.
• During one attempt, I put all my power boosts toward melee prowess and picked as many teeth I could that would increase my odds of attracting me toward monsters of that variety.
• During a separate session, I developed my adventurer around treasure chests and coupled it with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters whenever I opened a chest.

The customization choices are not endless, but they are sufficient to experiment with to allow you to tweak numbers the way you want.

An Ever-Present Tension

Of course, it remains a game of chance. There remains the risk that you have a high probability to land on the preferred space but wind up hitting a foe that would take out your remaining life. Each click is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you clear a floor out and choose whether to press onward or to advance to the following level as opposed to testing fate.

Tools such as explosive devices aid in reducing the chance, as do some special skills. An adventurer's unique ability, activated once clearing four squares, allows players to choose a vertical column instead of a horizontal row on a turn. If you play your cards right, you can save that move for an optimal time to sidestep a dangerous choice. There's a shocking degree of depth in the basic action of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is remaining in development, and it has at least one more update scheduled until the final game is released. An additional hero and a new boss are expected to drop sometime in January. The official version may not be much later, but the studio haven't committed to a final date yet.

A Final Thought

No matter when it's fully released, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I have been positively obsessed with it, finding all of hidden nuances and saving my accumulated currency per attempt to access a constant flow of persistent upgrades, such as new characters and items purchasable during a run. As of now, I am yet to completed the dungeon, and I suspect I'll continue working on that task when 1.0 finally hits. Count me in for the entire experience.