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Having experienced more than 200 fresh titles this year, I'm formally turning the page on 2025. My best-of compilation is live, and I feel content with the concluding selections, even knowing a host of excellent games probably slipped through the cracks. Currently, my only plan is to except relax, take a short break, and perhaps take a refreshing hike in the— well, shoot, stumbled upon a amazing experience. And just like that, goodbye to my intentions!

A Premature Favorite Surfaces

With my off-hours play, usually reserved for a selection of unusual games, I've encountered what could be my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that reimagines a classic labyrinth explorer into a chance-driven game of significant risk risk and reward. Take this as a preview for the in-the-know: If you enjoy discovering 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 different from everything I've previously experienced. The setup is that you must venture into a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper on a quest for the sun, which has gone missing from the fantasy world. When you play, that makes for some familiar roguelike structure. Pick a hero possessing unique parameters and powers, fight through each level of enemies, collect some permanent upgrades (represented as teeth), and vanquish a few biome bosses. Simple enough!

The Novel Gameplay Loop

How you truly navigate a dungeon room, though. Whenever you start another stage, you're shown a sixteen-square board of boxes. Each square either contains a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To explore a room, you choose on one of the four rows, but which square you land in is a matter of probability.

You may face a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You initially will have a one-in-four probability of landing on a particular space in a row.

Then, you'll odds shift. The question becomes: Do you press your luck, or do you choose on a alternative option first and attempt some more cautious selections early? Herein lies the risk-reward dynamic at play in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing when you acquire its rhythm.

Manipulating Probability

The procedural hook is that your odds can be manipulated during an attempt by collecting teeth that modify the types of squares you're drawn toward. As an instance, you might get a perk that will reduce the probability of encountering a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of getting a treasure chest too.

• Creating a build is about tweaking the numbers as best you can to have a higher chance at landing where you want.
• In one run, I put all my stat upgrades toward brute force and selected all the teeth I could that would boost my chances of being drawn to monsters aligned with that strength.
• During a separate session, I constructed my hero around loot caches and combined that with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies every time I opened a chest.

The build options are not endless, but it provides ample to work with to let you manipulate the odds according to your strategy.

A Persistent Tension

Of course, it remains a game of chance. You constantly face the risk that you have an 80% chance to select the desired tile but ultimately choose a monster that would deplete your last bit of health. All selections is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you work through a stage and determine if to continue selecting or to advance to the next floor rather than testing fate.

Consumables including enemy-killing bombs assist in minimizing the chance, just like some hero powers. A particular character's signature move, powered up by clearing four squares, allows players to choose a vertical column rather than a row during that action. If you play this strategically, you can hold that ability for an optimal time to circumvent a perilous selection. There's a shocking amount of nuance in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is still in early access, and it has another update scheduled before the full version is unleashed. An additional hero and a new boss are scheduled to arrive before the conclusion of January. The official version may not be much later, but the creators haven't announced a specific release window yet.

A Concluding Recommendation

No matter when the complete game arrives, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your radar. I've been thoroughly captivated with it, finding all of small details and storing my run rewards per attempt to unlock a steady stream of permanent unlocks, such as new characters and items I can buy mid-attempt. I still haven't found the deepest level, and I get the feeling I'll continue attempting that goal when 1.0 finally hits. Sign me up for the entire experience.