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Having experienced in excess of 200 recent games this year, I'm formally closing the book on 2025. My year-end list is published, and I feel content with the final results, accepting that a host of excellent games probably slipped through the cracks. Now, there's plan is to except relax, unplug a little, and perhaps take a pleasant stroll in the— well, shoot, 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 few oddball curiosities, I've encountered what might become my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar roguelike for Windows PC that breaks down a classic dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of high stakes danger and payoff. View this a preview for the in-the-know: If you take pride in knowing about a game before it hits the mainstream, give Sol Cesto a try so you can burn a spot in your indie credit card.

A Strategic Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's different from everything I'm familiar with. 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 disappeared from its world. When you play, that makes for some familiar roguelike structure. Select a character with their own attributes and skills, defeat enemies on every stage of monsters, collect some passive buffs (represented as teeth), and overcome a few stage-ending champions. Easy to grasp!

The Distinctive Gameplay Loop

The way you effectively complete a chamber, however. Every time you enter a new floor, the game presents a 4x4 grid of boxes. Each square either contains a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To make a move, you simply click on one of the horizontal lines, but the exact space you select is determined by luck.

You may face a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You begin with a one-in-four probability 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 safer line first and attempt some safer moves early? Herein lies the push-your-luck gameplay at play in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing once you get its rhythm.

Influencing Chance

The meta-layer is that your percentages can be shaped over the course of a session by gathering teeth that change what things you're drawn toward. To illustrate, you might get a perk that will lower your chances of landing on a trap, but will also decrease the odds of finding a reward too.

• Creating a build is about manipulating math to the utmost to have a improved likelihood at selecting the optimal square.
• On a particular session, I invested my power boosts toward brute force and chose every teeth possible that would improve my probability of landing on monsters aligned with that strength.
• During a separate session, I constructed my hero around loot caches and coupled it with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters each time I secured loot.

The customization choices are somewhat constrained, but it provides ample to work with to enable you to influence numbers according to your strategy.

A Persistent Gamble

Naturally, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There remains the possibility that you have an 80% chance to hit the square you want but ultimately choose on an enemy that would take out your final hit point. Each click is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you navigate a level and decide when to press onward or to proceed to the subsequent stage as opposed to risking it all.

Tools such as explosive devices assist in minimizing the chance, similar to some special skills. An adventurer's special power, powered up by selecting four tiles, enables you to select a vertical column instead of a horizontal line for that move. If you play this strategically, you can save that move for the right moment to avoid a risky decision. You'll find an astonishing amount of nuance in the basic action of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is currently in development, and it has a final update planned before the full version is unleashed. A new character and a fresh guardian are expected to drop before the conclusion of January. The full launch probably isn't long after, but the studio haven't announced a specific release window yet.

A Parting Thought

Whenever its 1.0 launch occurs, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I've been thoroughly captivated with it, discovering its little secrets and saving my accumulated currency every session to access a constant flow of meta progression rewards, such as fresh adventurers and items purchasable while playing. To this day, I have not completed the dungeon, and I suspect I will remain attempting that goal when 1.0 finally hits. Count me in for the entire experience.