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Following my time with well over 200 fresh titles this year, It's time to wrapping things up on 2025. My best-of compilation is out in the world, and I feel content with the concluding selections, even knowing plenty of excellent games may have dropped by the wayside. At this point, it's plan is to other than unwind, take a short break, and possibly go for a refreshing hike in the— ah crap, stumbled upon a amazing experience. There go my plans!

A Premature Front-Runner Appears

With my casual gaming time, usually reserved for a selection of unusual games, I've discovered what could be my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual roguelike for Windows PC that deconstructs a conventional dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of major consequence peril and prize. Consider this a hipster's insider tip: If you relish being aware of a game before it's cool, sample Sol Cesto so you can burn a spot in your indie credit card.

A Strategic Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's different from everything I've previously experienced. The setup is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper to find the sun, which has vanished from its world. In practice, this creates some recognizable genre framework. Pick a hero possessing unique stats and abilities, defeat enemies on every stage of enemies, collect some passive buffs (represented as teeth), and vanquish a few area guardians. Straightforward, right!

The Distinctive Central System

The method by which you actually clear a dungeon room, though. Whenever you begin a fresh level, the game presents a 4x4 grid of boxes. Every tile either contains a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To explore a room, you simply click on one of the horizontal lines, but which square you land in is up to chance.

You might see a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You initially will have a quarter likelihood of landing on a particular space in a row.

Subsequently, your probabilities change. So do you take the risk, or do you choose on a safer line first and try to make safer moves early? That's the push-your-luck gameplay in action in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating once you get its rhythm.

Manipulating Probability

The roguelike twist is that your probabilities can be influenced through a run by picking up teeth that change what things you're more likely to land on. To illustrate, you might get a perk that will reduce the probability of hitting a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of finding a reward too.

• Creating a build is about tweaking the numbers as best you can to have a better shot at selecting the optimal square.
• On a particular session, I invested my attribute improvements toward physical attack/defense and selected all the teeth I could that would improve my probability of landing on monsters of that variety.
• On a different attempt, I developed my adventurer around reward boxes and combined that with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters whenever I secured loot.

The customization choices are not endless, but they are sufficient to experiment with to enable you to influence numbers to your preference.

A Persistent Risk

Naturally, it remains a game of chance. There remains the risk that you have a high probability to hit the preferred space but ultimately choose a foe that would eliminate your last bit of health. Each click is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you navigate a level and choose whether to continue selecting or to proceed to the next floor as opposed to testing fate.

Tools such as enemy-killing bombs aid in reducing the chance, similar to some special skills. An adventurer's special power, charged after clearing four squares, allows players to choose a vertical line in place of a row during that action. Should you use this strategically, you can hold that ability for an optimal time to circumvent a perilous selection. It's a surprising amount of nuance in the basic action of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is still in its preview phase, and it has at least one more update scheduled before the final game is launched. An additional hero and a fresh guardian are scheduled to arrive before the conclusion of January. The full launch may not be much later, but the studio haven't set a final date yet.

A Parting Recommendation

Whenever it's fully released, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I've been completely engrossed with it, finding all of little secrets and storing my run rewards per attempt to access a constant flow of meta progression rewards, featuring new characters and items purchasable during a run. As of now, I am yet to reached the bottom, and I suspect I will remain attempting that goal when the official release drops. Sign me up for the complete journey.