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After playing well over 200 recent games this year, I'm formally closing the book on 2025. My annual roundup is live, and I am at peace with the ultimate rankings, even knowing a host of stellar titles likely fell under the radar. Currently, my only job is to other than unwind, unplug a little, and possibly go for a pleasant stroll in the— oh no, discovered one more great game. There go my intentions!

A Premature Contender Emerges

With my casual gaming time, typically earmarked for a selection of unusual games, I've discovered what could be my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar roguelike for Windows PC that breaks down a classic dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of significant risk risk and reward. View this a preview for the in-the-know: If you take pride being aware of a game before it's popular, 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 a departure from all I've previously experienced. The concept is that you must venture into a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper in search of the sun, which has gone missing from the fantasy world. When you play, this results in some standard crawl progression. Select a character who has stats and abilities, clear floor after floor of enemies, acquire some passive buffs (represented as teeth), and defeat a few stage-ending champions. Straightforward, right!

The Distinctive Gameplay Loop

The way you truly navigate a chamber, is unique. Whenever you start another stage, the game presents a sixteen-square board of boxes. All spaces features a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To proceed, you simply click on one of the four rows, but the specific tile you end up on is up to chance.

You may face a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You initially will have a quarter likelihood of hitting any given square in a row.

After that, the chances are recalculated. So do you take the risk, or do you click on a different row first and aim for less risky choices early? This is the tension between chance and safety on display in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing once you get a feel for it.

Manipulating Probability

The meta-layer is that your odds can be manipulated over the course of a session by picking up teeth that modify the types of squares you're drawn toward. For example, you may obtain a perk that will decrease your odds of landing on a trap, but will also decrease the odds of finding a treasure chest too.

• Developing a strategy is about influencing the statistics as best you can to have a higher chance at selecting the optimal square.
• During one attempt, I invested my power boosts toward physical attack/defense and chose every teeth I could that would improve my probability of landing on monsters of that variety.
• During a separate session, I constructed my hero around treasure chests and combined that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes every time I opened a chest.

The strategic possibilities are somewhat constrained, but they are sufficient to work with to enable you to influence numbers to your preference.

An Ever-Present Risk

Of course, it's still a game of chance. There remains the chance that you have an 80% chance to select the preferred space but end up landing on an enemy that would deplete your last bit of health. Every move is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you work through a stage and determine if to press onward or to proceed to the subsequent stage instead of risking it all.

Consumables including enemy-killing bombs help cut down the chance, as do some special skills. One hero's unique ability, powered up by making four moves, enables you to select a vertical column in place of a horizontal line during that action. By employing this strategically, you can save that move for the right moment to avoid a risky decision. It's a surprising level of strategy in the basic action of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is currently in its preview phase, and it has another update scheduled until the final game is unleashed. Another playable adventurer and a new boss are expected to drop by the end of January. The full launch probably isn't much later, but the creators haven't announced a specific release window yet.

A Final Recommendation

Whenever it's fully released, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I have been completely engrossed with it, finding all of little secrets and storing my run rewards per attempt to reveal a continuous trickle of persistent upgrades, including fresh adventurers and items I can buy while playing. As of now, I am yet to reached the bottom, and I have a sense I'll continue working on that task when 1.0 finally hits. I'm committed for the long haul.