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After playing in excess of 200 fresh titles this year, It's time to closing the book on 2025. My best-of compilation is out in the world, and I feel content with the concluding selections, even knowing numerous stellar titles likely fell through the cracks. At this point, it's plan is to other than unwind, disconnect briefly, and possibly go for a pleasant stroll in the— ah crap, found another brilliant title. And just like that, goodbye to my plans!

A Surprising Front-Runner Appears

With my laid-back sessions, often set aside for a few oddball curiosities, I've encountered what could be my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a classic dungeon crawler into a probability-fueled game of high stakes peril and prize. Take this as an early adopter's heads-up: If you take pride being aware of a game before it hits the mainstream, test out Sol Cesto so you can punch a hole in your indie credit card.

A Strategic Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's a departure from all I'm familiar with. The premise is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, descending floor after floor in search of the sun, which has vanished from this mythical realm. In practice, this creates some standard crawl progression. Choose an adventurer who has stats and abilities, fight through each level of enemies, collect some passive buffs (which are teeth), and defeat a few area guardians. Simple enough!

The Unique Core Mechanic

The way you effectively complete a chamber, however. Whenever you start another stage, you're shown a 4x4 grid of boxes. All spaces features a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To proceed, 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 begin with a quarter likelihood of landing on a particular space in a row.

Subsequently, your chances are recalculated. The question becomes: Do you take the risk, or do you opt on a safer line first and aim for less risky choices early? That's the risk-reward dynamic on display in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing when you acquire its rhythm.

Influencing Chance

The procedural hook is that your percentages can be shaped through a run by collecting teeth that modify the types of squares you're more likely to land on. To illustrate, you may obtain a perk that will decrease your odds of encountering a trap, but will also decrease the odds of finding a reward too.

• Developing a strategy is about manipulating math optimally to have a improved likelihood at getting your desired outcome.
• On a particular session, I put all my power boosts toward melee prowess and selected all the teeth possible that would increase my odds of attracting me toward monsters with that damage type.
• In another run, I developed my adventurer around loot caches and paired that with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters each time I claimed a reward.

The strategic possibilities are not endless, but it provides ample to engage with to let you manipulate probabilities the way you want.

An Ever-Present Risk

Of course, at its heart, it's a game of chance. You constantly face the chance that you have a likely outcome to hit the square you want but end up landing on an enemy that would deplete your last bit of health. All selections is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you clear a floor out and decide when to keep clicking or to proceed to the next floor rather than pushing your luck.

Items like enemy-killing bombs help cut down the chance, similar to some character abilities. One hero's signature move, powered up by making four moves, enables you to click on a vertical line rather than a row for that move. Should you use this strategically, you can hold that ability for the right moment to sidestep a dangerous choice. There's a shocking degree of depth in the simple act of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is remaining in development, and it has a final update to go before the complete edition is launched. Another playable adventurer and a new boss are planned for release sometime in January. The 1.0 release may not be far behind, but the creators haven't announced a concrete launch day yet.

A Final Endorsement

No matter when the complete game arrives, you should consider put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. For the past week, I've been positively obsessed with it, discovering its little secrets and storing my run rewards every session to reveal a continuous trickle of permanent unlocks, including additional heroes and items I can buy mid-attempt. As of now, I am yet to reached the bottom, and I have a sense I'll continue pursuing that objective when 1.0 finally hits. Sign me up for the entire experience.