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Having experienced in excess of 200 recent games this year, It's time to wrapping things up on 2025. My year-end list is live, and I am at peace with the ultimate rankings, accepting that plenty of stellar titles probably slipped through the cracks. At this point, it's plan is to except relax, unplug a little, and possibly go for a refreshing hike in the— ah crap, stumbled upon a brilliant title. There go my peaceful respite!

A Surprising Front-Runner Appears

With my casual gaming time, often set aside for a few oddball curiosities, I've come across what might become my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that deconstructs a classic dungeon crawler into a luck-based game of high stakes risk and reward. Take this as a hipster's insider tip: If you relish in knowing about a game before it's cool, sample Sol Cesto so you can make a dent in your indie credit card.

A Tactical Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's a departure from all I'm familiar with. The concept is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, going down level by level to find the sun, which has vanished from this mythical realm. In practice, this creates some standard crawl progression. Pick a hero with their own stats and abilities, clear floor after floor of monsters, collect some stat improvements (in the form of teeth), and vanquish a few stage-ending champions. Straightforward, right!

The Unique Gameplay Loop

The method by which you truly navigate a dungeon room, is unique. Whenever you begin a fresh level, the game presents a sixteen-square board of boxes. Every tile either contains a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To make a move, you just select on one of the four rows, but which square you select is up to chance.

You could encounter a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You begin with a quarter likelihood of selecting a specific tile in a row.

Subsequently, your odds shift. The question becomes: Do you go for it, or do you opt on a safer line first and try to make less risky choices early? That's the risk-reward dynamic on display in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing after you develop an understanding of it.

Influencing Chance

The procedural hook is that your percentages can be shaped over the course of a session by gathering teeth that change what things you're drawn toward. For example, you might get a perk that will reduce the probability of landing on a trap, but will also decrease the odds of getting a treasure chest too.

• Developing a strategy is about tweaking the numbers optimally to have a higher chance at getting your desired outcome.
• During one attempt, I put all my attribute improvements toward melee prowess and selected all the teeth possible that would increase my odds of being drawn to monsters aligned with that strength.
• On a different attempt, I developed my adventurer around loot caches and paired that with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters whenever I secured loot.

The customization choices are somewhat constrained, but there's enough to work with to allow you to tweak the odds the way you want.

A Persistent Risk

Naturally, it's still a game of chance. You constantly face the chance that you have an 80% chance to select the desired tile but ultimately choose a foe that would take out your last bit of health. Every move is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you navigate a level and choose whether to press onward or to proceed to the subsequent stage rather than testing fate.

Consumables including explosive devices help cut down the chance, as do some hero powers. A particular character's special power, powered up by selecting four tiles, lets gamers to click on a vertical column instead of a horizontal line during that action. If you play your cards right, you can hold that ability for a crucial point to circumvent a perilous selection. There's a shocking level of strategy in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is currently in its preview phase, and it has another update scheduled until the full version is unleashed. An additional hero and a new boss are scheduled to arrive by the end of January. The full launch probably isn't much later, but the game's developers haven't announced a final date yet.

A Final Endorsement

Regardless of when the complete game arrives, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I have been thoroughly captivated with it, finding all of little secrets and saving my accumulated currency per attempt to unlock a steady stream of persistent upgrades, such as additional heroes and items purchasable while playing. To this day, I have not completed the dungeon, and I suspect I'll continue pursuing that objective when the official release drops. Sign me up for the complete journey.