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After playing in excess of 200 recent games this year, I'm formally wrapping things up on 2025. My annual roundup is published, and I feel content with the final results, accepting that plenty of stellar titles likely fell by the wayside. Now, there's plan is to but sit back, unplug a little, and maybe enjoy a nice walk in the— oh no, discovered one more great game. So much for my peaceful respite!

A Premature Contender Emerges

In my more laid-back sessions, typically earmarked for a few oddball curiosities, I've discovered what could be my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that reimagines a conventional dungeon crawler into a luck-based game of significant risk risk and reward. View this a preview for the in-the-know: If you enjoy in knowing about a game before it hits the mainstream, test out Sol Cesto so you can burn a spot in your wallet for unique titles.

A Calculated Dungeon-Crawling Innovation

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's different from everything I've ever played. The concept is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, going down level by level to find the sun, which has gone missing from the fantasy world. When you play, that makes for some familiar roguelike structure. Choose an adventurer with their own attributes and skills, clear floor after floor of monsters, collect some stat improvements (represented as teeth), and defeat a few area guardians. Straightforward, right!

The Novel Gameplay Loop

The method by which you actually clear a dungeon room, however. Each instance you begin a fresh level, the game presents a 4x4 grid of boxes. Each square holds a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To make a move, you just select on one of the horizontal lines, but which square you select is up to chance.

You might see a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You initially will have a 25% chance of hitting a particular space in a row.

After that, the probabilities change. 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 in action in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing when you acquire an understanding of it.

Shaping the Odds

The roguelike twist is that your percentages can be shaped through a run by picking up teeth that alter which objects you're more attracted to. To illustrate, you may obtain a perk that will decrease your odds of encountering a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of getting a treasure chest too.

• Crafting a loadout is about tweaking the numbers as best you can to have a improved likelihood at getting your desired outcome.
• During one attempt, I put all my attribute improvements toward melee prowess and selected all the teeth I could that would increase my odds of attracting me toward monsters aligned with that strength.
• On a different attempt, I constructed my hero around treasure chests and paired that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes each time I claimed a reward.

The build options are not endless, but there's enough to engage with to let you manipulate numbers the way you want.

A Constant Risk

Unsurprisingly, it's still a game of chance. There's always the risk that you have an 80% chance to select the preferred space but end up landing a foe that would deplete your last bit of health. Each click is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you clear a floor out and decide when to press onward or to advance to the following level as opposed to risking it all.

Items like destructive ordnance aid in reducing the chance, similar to some special skills. A particular character's signature move, powered up by selecting four tiles, enables you to click on a vertical column in place of a row during that action. If you play this move wisely, you can hold that ability for an optimal time to avoid a risky decision. There's a shocking amount of nuance in the basic action of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is remaining in early access, and it has another update planned until the complete edition is launched. An additional hero and a fresh guardian are scheduled to arrive before the conclusion of January. The full launch likely won't be much later, but the game's developers haven't announced a concrete launch day yet.

A Concluding Thought

No matter when the complete game arrives, you should consider put Sol Cesto on your radar. I have been positively obsessed with it, finding all of small details and saving my accumulated currency in each run to access a constant flow of permanent unlocks, including new characters and items available for acquisition mid-attempt. I still haven't found the deepest level, and I suspect I will remain working on that task when 1.0 finally hits. Count me in for the long haul.