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Having experienced more than 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 am at peace with the ultimate rankings, even knowing plenty of stellar titles likely fell by the wayside. At this point, it's plan is to but sit back, disconnect briefly, and maybe enjoy a pleasant stroll in the— ah crap, found another great game. And just like that, goodbye to my plans!

A Premature Front-Runner Appears

In my more laid-back sessions, often set aside for a handful of quirky titles, I've come across potentially my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual roguelike for Windows PC that reimagines a conventional labyrinth explorer into a luck-based game of major consequence risk and reward. View this an early adopter's heads-up: If you take pride in knowing about a game before it's cool, test out Sol Cesto so you can burn a spot in your indie credit card.

A Strategic Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's a departure from all I've ever played. The premise is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper in search of the sun, which has vanished from this mythical realm. When you play, this creates some standard crawl progression. Pick a hero possessing unique stats and abilities, defeat enemies on every stage of foes, pick up some permanent upgrades (in the form of teeth), and overcome a few area guardians. Simple enough!

The Novel Core Mechanic

The way you effectively complete a area, though. Each instance you begin a fresh level, you see a four-by-four matrix of boxes. Each square holds a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To explore a room, you choose on one of the four rows, but the exact space you land in is determined by luck.

You might see a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You initially will have a quarter likelihood of hitting a particular space in a row.

Subsequently, your probabilities change. The question becomes: Do you take the risk, or do you opt on a alternative option first and try to make safer moves early? This is the push-your-luck gameplay in action in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing once you get its rhythm.

Shaping the Odds

The procedural hook is that your percentages can be shaped over the course of a session by gathering teeth that alter which objects you're more likely to land on. As an instance, you might get a perk that will lower your chances of encountering a trap, but will also decrease the odds of getting a reward too.

• Creating a build is about influencing the statistics to the utmost to have a improved likelihood at selecting the optimal square.
• During one attempt, I put all my power boosts toward melee prowess and selected all the teeth I could that would improve my probability of being drawn to monsters aligned with that strength.
• On a different attempt, I built my character around treasure chests and combined that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes each time I claimed a reward.

The build options are somewhat constrained, but it provides ample to work with to enable you to influence numbers the way you want.

An Ever-Present Tension

Of course, it remains a game of chance. There remains the possibility that you have a high probability to select 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 work through a stage and choose whether to continue selecting or when to move on to the following level as opposed to risking it all.

Items like enemy-killing bombs aid in reducing the chance, as do some special skills. A particular character's special power, powered up by selecting four tiles, lets gamers to choose a column instead of a row for that move. By employing your cards right, you can save that move for an optimal time to avoid a risky decision. It's a surprising amount of nuance in the basic action of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is currently in early access, and it has at least one more update planned until the final game is launched. An additional hero and a new boss are expected to drop before the conclusion of January. The 1.0 release probably isn't far behind, but the studio haven't announced a final date yet.

A Concluding Thought

Whenever the complete game arrives, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your radar. I have been positively obsessed with it, finding all of small details and banking my earned gold every session to reveal a continuous trickle of permanent unlocks, including fresh adventurers and items purchasable while playing. To this day, I have not found the deepest level, and I have a sense I will remain working on that task when the official release drops. Count me in for the complete journey.