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Following my time with in excess of 200 recent games this year, I am officially turning the page on 2025. My best-of compilation is published, and I'm satisfied with the ultimate rankings, despite being aware plenty of fantastic releases likely fell under the radar. Now, there's plan is to but sit back, take a short break, and maybe enjoy a pleasant stroll in the— well, shoot, found another amazing experience. There go my plans!

An Early Front-Runner Appears

During my off-hours play, typically earmarked for a few oddball curiosities, I've encountered what could be my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive roguelike for Windows PC that reimagines a classic labyrinth explorer into a luck-based game of high stakes risk and reward. Consider this a preview for the in-the-know: If you relish in knowing about a game before it hits the mainstream, sample Sol Cesto so you can punch a hole in your wallet for unique titles.

A Tactical Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's a departure from all I'm familiar with. The setup is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper in search of the sun, which has gone missing from the fantasy world. Mechanically, this results in some recognizable genre framework. Choose an adventurer who has parameters and powers, fight through each level of foes, collect some stat improvements (in the form of teeth), and defeat a few stage-ending champions. Easy to grasp!

The Unique Core Mechanic

The method by which you effectively complete a area, though. Every time you start another stage, you see a sixteen-square board of boxes. Each square features a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To explore a room, you choose on one of the four rows, 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 reward box in it. You initially will have a quarter likelihood of selecting any given square in a row.

Then, you'll odds shift. The question becomes: Do you go for it, or do you choose on a alternative option first and attempt some safer moves early? This is the risk-reward dynamic on display in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing after you develop a feel for it.

Shaping the Odds

The procedural hook is that your odds can be manipulated during an attempt by gathering teeth that modify the types of squares you're more likely to land on. As an instance, you might get a perk that will lower your chances of hitting a trap, but will also decrease the odds of landing on a reward too.

• Creating a build is about manipulating math as best you can to have a improved likelihood at getting your desired outcome.
• On a particular session, I invested my attribute improvements toward physical attack/defense and chose every teeth I could that would increase my odds of attracting me toward monsters of that variety.
• In another run, I constructed my hero around loot caches and combined that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes every time I secured loot.

The build options are somewhat constrained, but they are sufficient to experiment with to allow you to tweak probabilities to your preference.

An Ever-Present Gamble

Naturally, at its heart, it's a game of chance. You constantly face the risk that you have a likely outcome to hit the preferred space but ultimately choose on an enemy that would take out your remaining life. All selections is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you navigate a level and choose whether to press onward or to advance to the subsequent stage instead of testing fate.

Tools such as enemy-killing bombs help cut down the chance, similar to some hero powers. An adventurer's special power, activated once making four moves, allows players to choose a column instead of a row during that action. Should you use your cards right, you can save that move for the right moment to circumvent a perilous selection. You'll find an astonishing degree of depth in the basic action of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is currently in its preview phase, and it has another update to go until the final game is unleashed. Another playable adventurer and a new boss are expected to drop by the end of January. The full launch may not be long after, but the creators haven't committed to a specific release window yet.

A Final Thought

Whenever its 1.0 launch occurs, you might want to put Sol Cesto in your sights. For the past week, I've been completely engrossed with it, finding all of small details and storing my run rewards per attempt to access a constant flow of meta progression rewards, including new characters and items I can buy during a run. As of now, I am yet to found the deepest level, and I get the feeling I'll still be attempting that goal when 1.0 finally hits. I'm committed for the complete journey.