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After playing well over 200 recent games this year, I'm formally turning the page on 2025. My annual roundup is out in the world, and I feel content with the final results, even knowing a host of excellent games likely fell through the cracks. At this point, it's job is to other than unwind, disconnect briefly, and possibly go for a nice walk in the— oh no, found another great game. And just like that, goodbye to my intentions!

A Surprising Front-Runner Appears

During my casual gaming time, often set aside for a handful of quirky titles, I've encountered what might become my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual roguelike for Windows PC that reimagines a traditional labyrinth explorer into a luck-based game of high stakes danger and payoff. Consider this an early adopter's heads-up: If you take pride in knowing about a game before it's cool, give Sol Cesto a try so you can punch a hole in your wallet for unique titles.

A Strategic Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's different from everything I've previously experienced. The premise is that you must venture into a dungeon, going down level by level in search of the sun, which has vanished from the fantasy world. In practice, this creates some familiar roguelike structure. Choose an adventurer who has stats and abilities, clear floor after floor of monsters, collect some passive buffs (represented as teeth), and defeat a few biome bosses. Easy to grasp!

The Novel Central System

How you effectively complete a area, though. Each instance you begin a fresh level, you're shown a four-by-four matrix of boxes. Each square 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 horizontal lines, but the specific tile you end up on is a matter of probability.

You might see a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You start with a one-in-four probability of hitting a specific tile in a row.

Then, you'll odds shift. The question becomes: Do you take the risk, or do you choose on a alternative option first and aim for less risky choices early? Herein lies the tension between chance and safety at play in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating when you acquire its rhythm.

Manipulating Probability

The meta-layer is that your odds can be manipulated through a run by picking up teeth that change what things you're more attracted to. To illustrate, you might get a perk that will lower your chances of landing on a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of getting a reward too.

• Creating a build is about tweaking the numbers as best you can to have a higher chance at selecting the optimal square.
• During one attempt, I invested my attribute improvements toward physical attack/defense and chose every teeth possible that would boost my chances of being drawn to monsters of that variety.
• On a different attempt, I developed my adventurer around reward boxes and combined that with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies whenever I claimed a reward.

The build options are limited, but it provides ample to engage with to let you manipulate the odds according to your strategy.

A Constant Tension

Unsurprisingly, it's still a game of chance. There remains the chance that you have a likely outcome to land on the square you want but wind up hitting a monster that would eliminate your remaining life. All selections is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you clear a floor out and decide when to press onward or to proceed to the next floor as opposed to risking it all.

Tools such as destructive ordnance aid in reducing the chance, just like some hero powers. An adventurer's special power, activated once selecting four tiles, allows players to choose a vertical line rather than a row during that action. If you play this strategically, you can reserve that option for an optimal time to circumvent a perilous selection. There's a shocking amount of nuance in the basic action of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is still in development, and it has at least one more update planned until the full version is released. A new character and a new boss are scheduled to arrive sometime in January. The official version may not be far behind, but the game's developers haven't set a final date yet.

A Concluding Endorsement

Regardless of when its 1.0 launch occurs, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I have been completely engrossed with it, finding all of hidden nuances and storing my run rewards every session to reveal a continuous trickle of permanent unlocks, featuring fresh adventurers and items available for acquisition mid-attempt. I still haven't reached the bottom, and I have a sense I will remain pursuing that objective when 1.0 finally hits. Count me in for the long haul.