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Having experienced more than 200 fresh titles this year, I'm formally closing the book on 2025. My year-end list is out in the world, and I'm satisfied with the ultimate rankings, despite being aware a host of fantastic releases may have dropped under the radar. Now, there's plan is to except relax, unplug a little, and possibly go for a refreshing hike in the— ah crap, stumbled upon a great game. So much for my intentions!

A Premature Contender Emerges

During my laid-back sessions, typically earmarked for a handful of quirky titles, I've come across potentially my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that reimagines a classic labyrinth explorer into a luck-based game of major consequence risk and reward. Take this as an early adopter's heads-up: If you take pride discovering a game before it hits the mainstream, give Sol Cesto a try so you can burn a spot in your indie credit card.

A Tactical Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's unlike anything I've previously experienced. The setup is that you need to explore a dungeon, going down level by level on a quest for the sun, which has gone missing from its world. In practice, that makes for some familiar roguelike structure. Choose an adventurer with their own attributes and skills, clear floor after floor of enemies, acquire some stat improvements (represented as teeth), and overcome a few stage-ending champions. Easy to grasp!

The Distinctive Gameplay Loop

How you actually clear a dungeon room, is unique. Each instance you begin a fresh level, you see a sixteen-square board of boxes. Every tile holds a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To proceed, you just select on one of the four rows, but which square you end up on is a matter of probability.

You could encounter a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You begin with a quarter likelihood of selecting a particular space in a row.

Then, you'll odds shift. So do you take the risk, or do you opt on a different row first and try to make more cautious selections early? This is the push-your-luck gameplay on display in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing once you get a feel for it.

Shaping the Odds

The procedural hook is that your probabilities can be influenced over the course of a session by gathering teeth that change what things you're more attracted to. For example, you may obtain a perk that will lower your chances of encountering a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of getting a treasure chest too.

• Developing a strategy is about manipulating math as best you can to have a better shot at getting your desired outcome.
• During one attempt, I invested my power boosts toward brute force and picked as many teeth possible that would improve my probability of attracting me toward monsters aligned with that strength.
• On a different attempt, I built my character around loot caches and coupled it with a perk that would debuff nearby foes each time I opened a chest.

The build options are not endless, but they are sufficient to engage with to enable you to influence numbers according to your strategy.

An Ever-Present Risk

Naturally, it's still a game of chance. You constantly face the chance that you have an 80% chance to hit the preferred space but end up landing on an enemy that would eliminate your final hit point. Every move is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you navigate a level and determine if to keep clicking or to proceed to the subsequent stage rather than risking it all.

Tools such as enemy-killing bombs aid in reducing the chance, as do some hero powers. An adventurer's unique ability, activated once selecting four tiles, enables you to choose a vertical column in place of a horizontal line during that action. If you play your cards right, you can reserve that option for an optimal time to sidestep a dangerous choice. There's a shocking amount of nuance in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is remaining in development, and it has another update to go until the full version is released. Another playable adventurer and a fresh guardian are scheduled to arrive by the end of January. The full launch likely won't be long after, but the studio haven't set a concrete launch day yet.

A Concluding Recommendation

Whenever the complete game arrives, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your radar. For the past week, I've been positively obsessed with it, discovering its small details and banking my earned gold in each run to access a constant flow of persistent upgrades, featuring fresh adventurers and items purchasable during a run. As of now, I am yet to reached the bottom, and I have a sense I'll continue working on that task when the full version launches. Sign me up for the long haul.