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After playing in excess of 200 recent games this year, It's time to closing the book on 2025. My best-of compilation is live, and I'm satisfied with the ultimate rankings, despite being aware a host of fantastic releases probably slipped under the radar. Currently, my only plan is to other than unwind, take a short break, and possibly go for a nice walk in the— ah crap, stumbled upon a amazing experience. And just like that, goodbye to my intentions!

A Premature Contender Emerges

In my more off-hours play, typically earmarked for a few oddball curiosities, I've come across what might become my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that deconstructs a classic labyrinth explorer into a probability-fueled game of significant risk risk and reward. Consider this a hipster's insider tip: If you take pride in knowing about a game before it's cool, give Sol Cesto a try so you can make a dent in your wallet for unique titles.

A Tactical Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's different from everything I've previously experienced. The concept is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, going down level by level on a quest for the sun, which has vanished from its world. In practice, this results in some standard crawl progression. Select a character who has parameters and powers, fight through each level of enemies, acquire some permanent upgrades (in the form of teeth), and overcome a few biome bosses. Easy to grasp!

The Unique Core Mechanic

The way you effectively complete a area, is unique. Each instance you begin a fresh level, you see a four-by-four matrix of boxes. Every tile holds a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To explore a room, you simply click on one of the horizontal lines, but which square you end up on is determined by luck.

You may face a row with a pair of enemies, 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 chances are recalculated. So do you take the risk, or do you click on a different row first and aim for more cautious selections early? This is the push-your-luck gameplay at play in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing when you acquire a feel for it.

Shaping the Odds

The meta-layer is that your odds can be manipulated over the course of a session by picking up teeth that alter which objects you're more likely to land on. To illustrate, you could acquire a perk that will reduce the probability of encountering a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of finding a reward too.

• Crafting a loadout is about tweaking the numbers as best you can to have a higher chance at getting your desired outcome.
• On a particular session, I focused my power boosts toward melee prowess and selected all the teeth I could that would boost my chances of attracting me toward monsters of that variety.
• During a separate session, I constructed my hero around reward boxes and paired that with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies each time I secured loot.

The build options are somewhat constrained, but they are sufficient to experiment with to enable you to influence the odds to your preference.

A Constant Tension

Of course, it remains a game of chance. There remains the risk that you have a likely outcome to select the square you want but wind up hitting a monster that would deplete your final hit point. Each click is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you clear a floor out and choose whether to continue selecting or to proceed to the following level rather than risking it all.

Tools such as enemy-killing bombs assist in minimizing the chance, as do some special skills. A particular character's unique ability, powered up by clearing four squares, lets gamers to select a vertical line in place of a horizontal row during that action. Should you use this move wisely, you can save that move for a crucial point to circumvent a perilous selection. There's a shocking level of strategy in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is still in development, and it has at least one more update planned before the final game is released. An additional hero and a fresh guardian are expected to drop sometime in January. The 1.0 release may not be long after, but the game's developers haven't set a concrete launch day yet.

A Parting Endorsement

No matter when it's fully released, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I have been positively obsessed with it, discovering its hidden nuances and saving my accumulated currency in each run to access a constant flow of meta progression rewards, including new characters and items available for acquisition while playing. To this day, I have not completed the dungeon, and I have a sense I'll continue attempting that goal when the official release drops. I'm committed for the long haul.