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Following my time with in excess of 200 recent games this year, I am officially turning the page on 2025. My best-of compilation is out in the world, and I feel content with the ultimate rankings, despite being aware numerous stellar titles likely fell through the cracks. Currently, my only job is to except relax, unplug a little, and maybe enjoy a pleasant stroll in the— ah crap, found another brilliant title. There go my intentions!

A Premature Contender Emerges

In my more off-hours play, typically earmarked for a handful of quirky titles, I've encountered what could be my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar roguelike for Windows PC that breaks down a traditional labyrinth explorer into a luck-based game of major consequence danger and payoff. Consider this an early adopter's heads-up: If you relish in knowing about a game before it hits the mainstream, give Sol Cesto a try so you can make a dent in your wallet for unique titles.

A Tactical Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's different from everything I've previously experienced. The concept is that you need to explore a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper in search of the sun, which has disappeared from this mythical realm. Mechanically, this results in some standard crawl progression. Select a character who has parameters and powers, defeat enemies on every stage of foes, acquire some permanent upgrades (which are teeth), and defeat a few stage-ending champions. Simple enough!

The Novel Central System

How you actually clear a dungeon room, though. Every time you begin a fresh level, you see a four-by-four matrix of boxes. All spaces holds a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To proceed, you choose on one of the four rows, but the exact space you select is determined by luck.

You may face a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You initially will have a one-in-four probability of landing on any given square in a row.

After that, the chances are recalculated. The question becomes: Do you go for it, or do you opt on a different row first and try to make less risky choices early? This is the risk-reward dynamic at play in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing once you get an understanding of it.

Influencing Chance

The meta-layer is that your odds can be manipulated during an attempt by collecting teeth that change what things you're more likely to land on. As an instance, you might get a perk that will decrease your odds of landing on a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of finding a reward too.

• Developing a strategy is about manipulating math as best you can to have a better shot at selecting the optimal square.
• In one run, I put all my power boosts toward brute force and picked as many teeth I could that would boost my chances of being drawn to monsters with that damage type.
• In another run, I built my character around loot caches and paired that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes every time I opened a chest.

The build options are somewhat constrained, but it provides ample to experiment with to allow you to tweak numbers the way you want.

A Persistent Tension

Of course, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There's always the possibility that you have an 80% chance to select the square you want but wind up hitting a monster that would take out your final hit point. All selections is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you navigate a level and determine if to continue selecting or when to move on to the next floor as opposed to pushing your luck.

Tools such as destructive ordnance help cut down the chance, as do some character abilities. An adventurer's signature move, activated once clearing four squares, allows players to click on a vertical column rather than a horizontal line during that action. By employing this move wisely, you can save that move for a crucial point to sidestep a dangerous choice. There's a shocking degree of depth in the basic action of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is still in early access, and it has at least one more update to go before the full version is unleashed. An additional hero and a new boss are expected to drop sometime in January. The 1.0 release likely won't be long after, but the studio haven't announced a final date yet.

A Parting Thought

Whenever the complete game arrives, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I have been positively obsessed with it, discovering its hidden nuances and banking my earned gold every session to access a constant flow of meta progression rewards, featuring fresh adventurers and items available for acquisition during a run. I still haven't reached the bottom, and I get the feeling I will remain working on that task when the official release drops. Count me in for the entire experience.