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After playing well over 200 fresh titles this year, I'm formally turning the page on 2025. My annual roundup is published, and I am at peace with the final results, accepting that plenty of fantastic releases may have dropped under the radar. At this point, it's plan is to other than unwind, disconnect briefly, and perhaps take a pleasant stroll in the— ah crap, discovered one more great game. So much for my peaceful respite!

A Surprising Front-Runner Appears

In my more off-hours play, typically earmarked for a few oddball curiosities, I've come across potentially my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar roguelike for Windows PC that breaks down a traditional dungeon crawler into a luck-based game of high stakes risk and reward. View this a preview for the in-the-know: If you enjoy discovering a game before it's cool, test out Sol Cesto so you can punch a hole in your gaming budget.

A Tactical Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's unlike anything I'm familiar with. The concept is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, going down level by level to find the sun, which has disappeared from the fantasy world. Mechanically, that makes for some standard crawl progression. Select a character who has parameters and powers, clear floor after floor of foes, acquire some stat improvements (which are teeth), and vanquish a few area guardians. Straightforward, right!

The Novel Central System

The way you actually clear a chamber, however. Whenever you enter a new floor, the game presents a sixteen-square board of boxes. All spaces holds a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To make a move, you just select on one of the four rows, but which square you end up on is determined by luck.

You may face a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You start with a 25% chance of hitting a particular space in a row.

After that, the probabilities change. So do you take the risk, or do you choose on a alternative option first and try to make safer moves early? Herein lies the risk-reward dynamic in action in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating after you develop a feel for it.

Influencing Chance

The roguelike twist is that your odds can be manipulated during an attempt by picking up teeth that alter which objects you're drawn toward. As an instance, you may obtain 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 manipulating math as best you can to have a higher chance at getting your desired outcome.
• On a particular session, I invested my attribute improvements toward physical attack/defense and chose every teeth possible that would improve my probability of being drawn to monsters with that damage type.
• During a separate session, I built my character around treasure chests and paired that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes each time I opened a chest.

The customization choices are limited, but they are sufficient to experiment with to enable you to influence the odds the way you want.

A Constant Tension

Unsurprisingly, at its heart, it's a game of chance. You constantly face the risk that you have a likely outcome to hit the preferred space but end up landing a monster that would take out your last bit of health. Each click is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you navigate a level and determine if to keep clicking or to proceed to the following level as opposed to pushing your luck.

Items like explosive devices assist in minimizing the chance, as do some special skills. One hero's unique ability, charged after making four moves, enables you to click on a vertical column in place of a horizontal line on a turn. Should you use your cards right, you can hold that ability for a crucial point to sidestep a dangerous choice. You'll find an astonishing amount of nuance in the simple act of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is remaining in early access, and it has another update planned before the final game is launched. A new character and a additional end-level foe are planned for release sometime in January. The official version may not be far behind, but the creators haven't announced a concrete launch day yet.

A Parting Endorsement

Regardless of when the complete game arrives, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your radar. I've been completely engrossed with it, finding all of small details and saving my accumulated currency every session to unlock a steady stream of meta progression rewards, including fresh adventurers and items available for acquisition during a run. I still haven't completed the dungeon, and I suspect I will remain working on that task when the full version launches. Sign me up for the complete journey.