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Having experienced in excess of 200 fresh titles this year, It's time to wrapping things up on 2025. My year-end list is live, and I feel content with the concluding selections, despite being aware numerous stellar titles probably slipped by the wayside. At this point, it's nothing for me to do except relax, take a short break, and perhaps take a pleasant stroll in the— ah crap, stumbled upon a amazing experience. There go my intentions!

A Surprising Contender Emerges

During my laid-back sessions, 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 procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a classic dungeon crawler into a probability-fueled game of major consequence peril and prize. Take this as a hipster's insider tip: If you relish in knowing about a game before it hits the mainstream, give Sol Cesto a try so you can punch a hole in your gaming budget.

A Calculated Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's unlike anything I've ever played. The concept is that you need to explore a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper on a quest for the sun, which has gone missing from the fantasy world. Mechanically, this creates some standard crawl progression. Choose an adventurer with their own attributes and skills, clear floor after floor of monsters, acquire some passive buffs (which are teeth), and defeat a few biome bosses. Easy to grasp!

The Distinctive Gameplay Loop

The method by which you actually clear a chamber, though. Whenever you start another stage, you're shown a sixteen-square board of boxes. All spaces either contains a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To make a move, you simply click on one of the horizontal lines, but the specific tile you land in is a matter of probability.

You may face a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You begin with a 25% chance of selecting a specific tile in a row.

After that, the odds shift. The question becomes: Do you go for it, or do you opt on a safer line first and attempt some more cautious selections early? That's the tension between chance and safety at play in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing once you get a feel for it.

Manipulating Probability

The roguelike twist is that your odds can be manipulated over the course of a session by picking up teeth that change what things you're drawn toward. For example, you may obtain a perk that will decrease your odds of hitting a trap, but will also decrease the odds of landing on a reward too.

• Creating a build is about manipulating math as best you can to have a improved likelihood at selecting the optimal square.
• During one attempt, I focused my power boosts toward physical attack/defense and chose every teeth I could that would increase my odds of landing on monsters aligned with that strength.
• During a separate session, I constructed my hero around loot caches and paired that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes whenever I opened a chest.

The build options are somewhat constrained, but they are sufficient to work with to let you manipulate the odds according to your strategy.

A Persistent Gamble

Unsurprisingly, it remains a game of chance. There's always the risk that you have a likely outcome to land on the preferred space but ultimately choose a monster that would deplete your last bit of health. Every move is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you navigate a level and determine if to press onward or when to move on to the subsequent stage as opposed to pushing your luck.

Items like explosive devices help cut down the chance, similar to some hero powers. One hero's unique ability, activated once clearing four squares, lets gamers to choose a vertical line rather than a row for that move. By employing this move wisely, you can hold that ability for a crucial point to circumvent a perilous selection. It's a surprising amount of nuance in the simple act of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is still in its preview phase, and it has a final update to go before the final game is released. A new character and a fresh guardian are scheduled to arrive before the conclusion of January. The official version may not be long after, but the creators haven't announced a concrete launch day yet.

A Concluding Thought

No matter when the complete game arrives, you should consider put Sol Cesto in your sights. I have been completely engrossed with it, finding all of small details and storing my run rewards per attempt to unlock a steady stream of meta progression rewards, such as fresh adventurers and items purchasable while playing. I still haven't completed the dungeon, and I get the feeling I'll continue pursuing that objective when the full version launches. Count me in for the entire experience.