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Having experienced well over 200 recent games this year, It's time to wrapping things up on 2025. My annual roundup is out in the world, and I am at peace with the final results, even knowing plenty of fantastic releases likely fell through the cracks. Currently, my only plan is to other than unwind, unplug a little, and possibly go for a refreshing hike in the— oh no, stumbled upon a great game. And just like that, goodbye to my plans!

An Early Front-Runner Appears

During my laid-back sessions, typically earmarked for a handful of quirky titles, I've discovered potentially my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a traditional labyrinth explorer into a probability-fueled game of major consequence risk and reward. View this an early adopter's heads-up: If you enjoy discovering a game before it's cool, test out Sol Cesto so you can burn a spot in your indie credit card.

A Calculated Dungeon-Crawling Innovation

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's unlike anything I'm familiar with. The premise is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, going down level by level on a quest for the sun, which has disappeared from its world. In practice, this results in some standard crawl progression. Choose an adventurer with their own attributes and skills, fight through each level of enemies, collect some stat improvements (represented as teeth), and defeat a few area guardians. Straightforward, right!

The Unique Core Mechanic

How you truly navigate a chamber, though. Every time you enter a new floor, you see a 4x4 grid of boxes. All spaces holds a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To proceed, you choose on one of the four rows, but the specific tile you end up on is a matter of probability.

You could encounter a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You begin with a 25% chance of selecting any given square in a row.

Subsequently, your chances are recalculated. The question becomes: Do you press your luck, or do you choose on a safer line first and attempt some more cautious selections early? Herein lies the risk-reward dynamic on display in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating once you get a feel for it.

Shaping the Odds

The meta-layer is that your odds can be manipulated during an attempt by picking up teeth that modify the types of squares you're more likely to land on. As an instance, you could acquire a perk that will decrease your odds of encountering a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of finding a treasure chest too.

• Creating a build is about manipulating math as best you can to have a higher chance at landing where you want.
• During one attempt, I focused my power boosts toward brute force and picked as many teeth I could that would boost my chances of attracting me toward monsters aligned with that strength.
• During a separate session, I developed my adventurer around loot caches and coupled it with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters each time I claimed a reward.

The strategic possibilities are limited, but it provides ample to engage with to let you manipulate probabilities according to your strategy.

A Persistent Tension

Of course, it remains a game of chance. There's always the possibility that you have an 80% chance to select the square you want but wind up hitting on an enemy that would eliminate your final hit point. Every move is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you clear a floor out and decide when to continue selecting or to proceed to the subsequent stage instead of risking it all.

Tools such as enemy-killing bombs help cut down the chance, similar to some character abilities. One hero's unique ability, charged after selecting four tiles, enables you to choose a column in place of a horizontal line for that move. By employing this strategically, you can reserve that option for an optimal time to circumvent a perilous selection. It's a surprising degree of depth in the basic action of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is currently in development, and it has at least one more update to go until the full version is launched. An additional hero and a fresh guardian are planned for release before the conclusion of January. The 1.0 release may not be far behind, but the creators haven't set a specific release window yet.

A Concluding Endorsement

Whenever it's fully released, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I have been positively obsessed with it, finding all of small details and storing my run rewards every session to unlock a steady stream of persistent upgrades, including additional heroes and items purchasable during a run. I still haven't reached the bottom, and I get the feeling I'll still be attempting that goal when the full version launches. Sign me up for the complete journey.