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After playing well over 200 recent games this year, It's time to closing the book on 2025. My year-end list is live, and I am at peace with the final results, even knowing plenty of excellent games probably slipped under the radar. Now, there's nothing for me to do except relax, take a short break, and perhaps take a pleasant stroll in the— well, shoot, found another amazing experience. There go my peaceful respite!

A Premature Contender Emerges

In my more laid-back sessions, typically earmarked for a few oddball curiosities, I've come across what could be my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive roguelike for Windows PC that deconstructs a traditional dungeon crawler into a probability-fueled game of significant risk risk and reward. Consider this a preview for the in-the-know: If you relish being aware of a game before it hits the mainstream, test out Sol Cesto so you can make a dent in your indie credit card.

A Tactical Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's unlike anything I'm familiar with. The setup is that you must venture into a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper in search of the sun, which has gone missing from its world. When you play, this creates some recognizable genre framework. Pick a hero possessing unique parameters and powers, clear floor after floor of enemies, acquire some stat improvements (which are teeth), and vanquish a few stage-ending champions. Straightforward, right!

The Unique Core Mechanic

The method by which you actually clear a dungeon room, however. Whenever you enter a new floor, you see a sixteen-square board of boxes. Every tile holds a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To explore a room, you simply click on one of the horizontal lines, but the exact space you end up on is up to chance.

You might see a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You start with a 25% chance of selecting a particular space in a row.

After that, the probabilities change. The question becomes: Do you go for it, or do you click on a different row first and aim for safer moves early? Herein lies the push-your-luck gameplay at play in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating when you acquire its rhythm.

Manipulating Probability

The roguelike twist is that your odds can be manipulated through a run by gathering teeth that modify the types of squares you're drawn toward. To illustrate, you may obtain a perk that will reduce the probability of hitting a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of getting a treasure chest too.

• Developing a strategy is about influencing the statistics optimally to have a better shot at getting your desired outcome.
• On a particular session, I invested my power boosts toward brute force and chose every teeth I could that would boost my chances of attracting me toward monsters with that damage type.
• During a separate session, I developed my adventurer around treasure chests and combined that with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters each time I claimed a reward.

The strategic possibilities are not endless, but they are sufficient to engage with to let you manipulate the odds the way you want.

A Constant Gamble

Unsurprisingly, it's still a game of chance. There remains the risk that you have an 80% chance to hit the desired tile but wind up hitting on an enemy that would take out your final hit point. Every move is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you navigate a level and decide when to keep clicking or when to move on to the following level instead of pushing your luck.

Items like explosive devices help cut down the chance, as do some character abilities. A particular character's signature move, powered up by clearing four squares, enables you to click on a column instead of a row during that action. By employing this strategically, you can reserve that option for an optimal time to sidestep a dangerous choice. There's a shocking amount of nuance in the basic action of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is remaining in development, and it has another update to go until the final game is launched. An additional hero and a additional end-level foe are planned for release before the conclusion of January. The 1.0 release may not be long after, but the studio haven't committed to a final date yet.

A Final Recommendation

Regardless of when its 1.0 launch occurs, you should consider put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I have been positively obsessed with it, finding all of hidden nuances and storing my run rewards every session to reveal a continuous trickle of persistent upgrades, including additional heroes and items I can buy while playing. To this day, I have not completed the dungeon, and I have a sense I will remain attempting that goal when the official release drops. Sign me up for the entire experience.