After playing well over 200 recent games this year, It's time to turning the page on 2025. My annual roundup is live, and I'm satisfied with the final results, despite being aware a host of stellar titles probably slipped through the cracks. Now, there's plan is to other than unwind, unplug a little, and possibly go for a refreshing hike in the— oh no, found another brilliant title. There go my plans!
A Premature Front-Runner Appears
In my more casual gaming time, often set aside for a few oddball curiosities, I've discovered what could be my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a conventional dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of major consequence peril and prize. Take this as an early adopter's heads-up: If you take pride in knowing about a game before it's popular, test out Sol Cesto so you can make a dent in your gaming budget.
A Calculated Genre Subversion
Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's a departure from all I'm familiar with. The premise is that you need to explore a dungeon, descending floor after floor on a quest for the sun, which has disappeared from the fantasy world. When you play, this results in some familiar roguelike structure. Select a character possessing unique parameters and powers, defeat enemies on every stage of monsters, collect some permanent upgrades (represented as teeth), and vanquish a few area guardians. Simple enough!
The Unique Central System
The method by which you truly navigate a chamber, though. Every time you start another stage, the game presents a sixteen-square board of boxes. All spaces features a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To explore a room, you just select on one of the four rows, but the exact space you end up on is a matter of probability.
You might see a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You start with a 25% chance of hitting any given square in a row.
Then, you'll probabilities change. The question becomes: Do you press your luck, or do you click on a different row first and attempt some safer moves early? This is the push-your-luck gameplay in action in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing after you develop its rhythm.
Manipulating Probability
The roguelike twist is that your odds can be manipulated over the course of a session by collecting teeth that alter which objects you're more likely to land on. As an instance, you may obtain a perk that will lower your chances of encountering a trap, but will also decrease the odds of getting a treasure chest too.
- Crafting a loadout is about influencing the statistics optimally to have a improved likelihood at selecting the optimal square.
- In one run, I put all my power boosts toward brute force and chose every teeth I could that would increase my odds of landing on monsters with that damage type.
- On a different attempt, I developed my adventurer around reward boxes and paired that with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies whenever I opened a chest.
The strategic possibilities are somewhat constrained, but there's enough to engage with to let you manipulate probabilities according to your strategy.
An Ever-Present Tension
Naturally, it's still a game of chance. There remains the risk that you have a high probability to select the desired tile but wind up hitting a foe that would deplete your last bit of health. Each click is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you work through a stage and decide when to keep clicking or to proceed to the following level as opposed to pushing your luck.
Consumables including explosive devices help cut down the chance, just like some special skills. A particular character's signature move, activated once clearing four squares, enables you to select a vertical column instead of a horizontal row on a turn. Should you use your cards right, you can reserve that option for a crucial point to sidestep a dangerous choice. There's a shocking degree of depth in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.
Future Development
Sol Cesto is still in early access, and it has at least one more update planned before the complete edition is released. A new character and a fresh guardian are expected to drop sometime in January. The full launch likely won't be far behind, but the game's developers haven't committed to a final date yet.
A Parting Endorsement
No matter when it's fully released, you might want to put Sol Cesto in your sights. I have been thoroughly captivated with it, uncovering each of small details and banking my earned gold per attempt to reveal a continuous trickle of meta progression rewards, such as additional heroes and items available for acquisition mid-attempt. I still haven't reached the bottom, and I suspect I'll still be attempting that goal when the official release drops. Sign me up for the entire experience.
