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After playing well over 200 fresh titles this year, It's time to closing the book on 2025. My annual roundup is out in the world, and I'm satisfied with the ultimate rankings, accepting that numerous excellent games may have dropped by the wayside. Currently, my only nothing for me to do but sit back, unplug a little, and maybe enjoy a pleasant stroll in the— well, shoot, discovered one more great game. And just like that, goodbye to my intentions!

An Early Favorite Surfaces

During my off-hours play, typically earmarked for a handful of quirky titles, I've come across what could be my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar roguelike for Windows PC that breaks down a traditional labyrinth explorer into a chance-driven game of significant risk risk and reward. Take this as a preview for the in-the-know: If you enjoy being aware of a game before it hits the mainstream, test out Sol Cesto so you can make a dent in your gaming budget.

A Strategic Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's different from everything I've ever played. The setup is that you must venture into a dungeon, going down level by level to find the sun, which has disappeared from the fantasy world. In practice, that makes for some standard crawl progression. Select a character possessing unique attributes and skills, defeat enemies on every stage of foes, pick up some passive buffs (in the form of teeth), and vanquish a few biome bosses. Easy to grasp!

The Unique Central System

The method by which you truly navigate a dungeon room, is unique. Each instance you enter a new floor, you see a sixteen-square board of boxes. All spaces holds a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To make a move, you choose on one of the four rows, but the exact space you end up on is determined by luck.

You might see a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You begin with a quarter likelihood of hitting a particular space in a row.

Subsequently, your odds shift. So do you press your luck, or do you click on a safer line first and attempt some less risky choices early? Herein lies the tension between chance and safety on display in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating when you acquire a feel for it.

Shaping the Odds

The meta-layer is that your odds can be manipulated through a run by picking up teeth that change what things you're drawn toward. To illustrate, you could acquire a perk that will decrease your odds of encountering a trap, but will also decrease the odds of getting a reward too.

• Creating a build is about influencing the statistics optimally to have a better shot at getting your desired outcome.
• On a particular session, I focused my stat upgrades toward melee prowess and chose every teeth I could that would increase my odds of landing on monsters with that damage type.
• During a separate session, I constructed my hero around treasure chests and coupled it with a perk that would debuff nearby foes every time I secured loot.

The build options are limited, but it provides ample to work with to enable you to influence probabilities to your preference.

An Ever-Present Tension

Unsurprisingly, it remains a game of chance. There remains the risk that you have a likely outcome to land on the square you want but end up landing a monster that would take out your final hit point. Each click is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you navigate a level and decide when to keep clicking or to advance to the subsequent stage rather than pushing your luck.

Items like explosive devices aid in reducing the chance, as do some character abilities. One hero's unique ability, charged after selecting four tiles, lets gamers to select a vertical column instead of a horizontal row on a turn. Should you use your cards right, you can hold that ability for an optimal time to circumvent a perilous selection. There's a shocking amount of nuance in the simple act of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is currently in development, and it has a final update planned until the full version is launched. Another playable adventurer and a additional end-level foe are planned for release by the end of January. The full launch likely won't be much later, but the studio haven't set a concrete launch day yet.

A Concluding Recommendation

Whenever the complete game arrives, you should consider put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I've been completely engrossed with it, discovering its hidden nuances and saving my accumulated currency per attempt to unlock a steady stream of meta progression rewards, featuring new characters and items I can buy mid-attempt. I still haven't found the deepest level, and I get the feeling I'll continue working on that task when the official release drops. Count me in for the long haul.