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Following my time with well over 200 recent games this year, I'm formally closing the book on 2025. My year-end list is published, and I'm satisfied with the final results, despite being aware plenty of excellent games likely fell under the radar. Currently, my only nothing for me to do but sit back, take a short break, and possibly go for a refreshing hike in the— well, shoot, stumbled upon a brilliant title. So much for my intentions!

A Premature Front-Runner Appears

In my more off-hours play, usually reserved for a handful of quirky titles, I've encountered what might become my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that deconstructs a classic dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of major consequence danger and payoff. Consider this an early adopter's heads-up: If you relish being aware of a game before it's popular, sample Sol Cesto so you can make a dent in your gaming budget.

A Tactical Dungeon-Crawling Innovation

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's different from everything I've ever played. The setup is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, descending floor after floor to find the sun, which has vanished from this mythical realm. When you play, that makes for some familiar roguelike structure. Choose an adventurer with their own attributes and skills, clear floor after floor of foes, acquire some stat improvements (in the form of teeth), and overcome a few biome bosses. Simple enough!

The Distinctive Core Mechanic

How you actually clear a dungeon room, is unique. Whenever you enter a new floor, you see a four-by-four matrix 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 horizontal lines, but the specific tile you select is determined by luck.

You might see a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You start with a 25% chance of landing on a specific tile in a row.

Then, you'll probabilities change. So do you take the risk, or do you opt on a alternative option first and aim for less risky choices early? This is the tension between chance and safety in action in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating once you get an understanding of it.

Influencing Chance

The meta-layer is that your probabilities can be influenced through a run by picking up teeth that modify the types of squares you're more attracted to. For example, you could acquire a perk that will decrease your odds of landing on a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of finding a reward too.

• Creating a build is about tweaking the numbers as best you can to have a improved likelihood at getting your desired outcome.
• On a particular session, I invested my attribute improvements toward physical attack/defense and picked as many teeth I could that would boost my chances of attracting me toward monsters of that variety.
• In another run, I constructed my hero around loot caches and combined that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes each time I opened a chest.

The customization choices are somewhat constrained, but there's enough to engage with to allow you to tweak probabilities according to your strategy.

A Constant Tension

Naturally, it's still a game of chance. You constantly face the possibility that you have a high probability to select the square you want but wind up hitting a monster that would deplete your remaining life. Every move is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you work through a stage and determine if to press onward or to advance to the next floor instead of risking it all.

Consumables including explosive devices aid in reducing the chance, as do some hero powers. A particular character's special power, activated once selecting four tiles, allows players to select a vertical column instead of a row for that move. Should you use your cards right, you can reserve that option for an optimal time to circumvent a perilous selection. There's a shocking degree of depth in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is still in early access, and it has another update scheduled until the full version is launched. A new character and a new boss are scheduled to arrive sometime in January. The full launch may not be far behind, but the game's developers haven't set a final date yet.

A Final Endorsement

Regardless of when the complete game arrives, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your radar. For the past week, I've been completely engrossed with it, discovering its hidden nuances and storing my run rewards every session to access a constant flow of meta progression rewards, including fresh adventurers and items purchasable mid-attempt. I still haven't reached the bottom, and I have a sense I'll continue attempting that goal when the full version launches. I'm committed for the complete journey.