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Having experienced more than 200 recent games this year, I'm formally wrapping things up on 2025. My best-of compilation is published, and I am at peace with the ultimate rankings, despite being aware a host of stellar titles probably slipped through the cracks. Currently, my only plan is to but sit back, take a short break, and possibly go for a refreshing hike in the— oh no, found another amazing experience. So much for my peaceful respite!

An Early Front-Runner Appears

During my off-hours play, typically earmarked for a few oddball curiosities, I've come across potentially my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that reimagines a traditional dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of major consequence danger and payoff. View this an early adopter's heads-up: If you take pride being aware of a game before it's popular, give Sol Cesto a try so you can punch a hole in your indie credit card.

A Tactical Roguelike Twist

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 in search of the sun, which has gone missing from the fantasy world. Mechanically, this creates some familiar roguelike structure. Select a character who has parameters and powers, clear floor after floor of monsters, acquire some passive buffs (which are teeth), and overcome a few biome bosses. Straightforward, right!

The Novel Core Mechanic

The way you effectively complete a area, is unique. Whenever you begin a fresh level, you're shown a 4x4 grid of boxes. Every tile features a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To explore a room, you choose on one of the four rows, but the exact space you select is up to chance.

You may face a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You start with a quarter likelihood of landing on any given square in a row.

Then, you'll probabilities change. So do you take the risk, or do you opt on a safer line first and aim for less risky choices early? This is the risk-reward dynamic in action in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating after you develop a feel for it.

Manipulating Probability

The meta-layer is that your probabilities can be influenced during an attempt by collecting teeth that alter which objects you're drawn toward. To illustrate, you could acquire 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 tweaking the numbers to the utmost to have a improved likelihood at selecting the optimal square.
• In one run, I focused my attribute improvements toward melee prowess and chose every teeth I could that would boost my chances of attracting me toward monsters of that variety.
• On a different attempt, I constructed my hero around treasure chests and combined that with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters each time I opened a chest.

The strategic possibilities are somewhat constrained, but they are sufficient to engage with to allow you to tweak probabilities according to your strategy.

A Persistent Risk

Naturally, at its heart, it's a game of chance. You constantly face the risk that you have a high probability to land on the square you want but end up landing a monster that would eliminate your remaining life. All selections is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you navigate a level and choose whether to keep clicking or to advance to the next floor rather than pushing your luck.

Tools such as enemy-killing bombs help cut down the chance, as do some special skills. An adventurer's special power, charged after clearing four squares, allows players to click on a vertical line instead of a horizontal row for that move. Should you use your cards right, you can save that move for an optimal time to circumvent a perilous selection. There's a shocking level of strategy in the basic action of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is still in early access, and it has at least one more update planned before the complete edition is launched. An additional hero and a additional end-level foe are expected to drop by the end of January. The official version likely won't be much later, but the game's developers haven't set a concrete launch day yet.

A Final Recommendation

No matter when it's fully released, you might want to put Sol Cesto in your sights. For the past week, I've been positively obsessed with it, discovering its hidden nuances and saving my accumulated currency every session to unlock a steady stream of meta progression rewards, featuring additional heroes and items available for acquisition during a run. To this day, I have not found the deepest level, and I have a sense I'll still be attempting that goal when the official release drops. I'm committed for the entire experience.