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Having experienced more than 200 new releases this year, It's time to wrapping things up on 2025. My annual roundup is live, and I feel content with the final results, even knowing a host of stellar titles probably slipped under the radar. Now, there's nothing for me to do except relax, disconnect briefly, and perhaps take a refreshing hike in the— oh no, stumbled upon a brilliant title. And just like that, goodbye to my plans!

A Premature Front-Runner Appears

During my casual gaming time, often set aside for a handful of quirky titles, I've come across what might become my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual roguelike for Windows PC that breaks down a traditional labyrinth explorer into a luck-based game of high stakes risk and reward. Take this as an early adopter's heads-up: If you relish discovering a game before it's popular, sample Sol Cesto so you can punch a hole in your wallet for unique titles.

A Tactical Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's different from everything I've ever played. The setup is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper in search of the sun, which has gone missing from this mythical realm. In practice, this creates some standard crawl progression. Pick a hero who has parameters and powers, defeat enemies on every stage of foes, pick up some permanent upgrades (represented as teeth), and defeat a few biome bosses. Simple enough!

The Novel Central System

The way you effectively complete a chamber, though. Whenever you start another stage, you see a 4x4 grid of boxes. Every tile features a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To make a move, you choose on one of the horizontal lines, but the specific tile you select is up to chance.

You may face a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You start with a quarter likelihood of landing on a particular space in a row.

After that, the chances are recalculated. So do you press your luck, or do you choose on a safer line first and attempt some less risky choices early? Herein lies the risk-reward dynamic in action in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing once you get a feel for it.

Shaping the Odds

The meta-layer is that your percentages can be shaped over the course of a session by gathering teeth that change what things you're drawn toward. To illustrate, you may obtain a perk that will decrease your odds of encountering a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of getting a treasure chest too.

• Developing a strategy is about influencing the statistics as best you can to have a better shot at selecting the optimal square.
• On a particular session, I invested my stat upgrades toward melee prowess and picked as many teeth I could that would boost my chances of landing on monsters aligned with that strength.
• During a separate session, I developed my adventurer around loot caches and coupled it with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters each time I opened a chest.

The strategic possibilities are limited, but they are sufficient to experiment with to enable you to influence numbers the way you want.

A Constant Risk

Of course, it remains a game of chance. There's always the risk that you have a likely outcome to land on the square you want but end up landing on an enemy that would take out your final hit point. All selections is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you clear a floor out and decide when to continue selecting or to proceed to the following level instead of testing fate.

Consumables including destructive ordnance aid in reducing the chance, similar to some character abilities. One hero's signature move, powered up by clearing four squares, lets gamers to choose a vertical column rather than a horizontal line during that action. By employing your cards right, you can reserve that option for the right moment to circumvent a perilous selection. You'll find an astonishing degree of depth in the basic action of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is remaining in early access, and it has another update planned before the full version is released. A new character and a new boss are expected to drop sometime in January. The official version likely won't be much later, but the studio haven't committed to a final date yet.

A Concluding Endorsement

Regardless of when the complete game arrives, you should consider put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I've been thoroughly captivated with it, discovering its small details and saving my accumulated currency in each run to unlock a steady stream of permanent unlocks, including new characters and items I can buy while playing. To this day, I have not found the deepest level, and I have a sense I'll still be attempting that goal when 1.0 finally hits. Count me in for the complete journey.