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Following my time with well over 200 recent games this year, I am officially closing the book on 2025. My best-of compilation is live, and I'm satisfied with the concluding selections, despite being aware a host of fantastic releases may have dropped by the wayside. Now, there's nothing for me to do except relax, disconnect briefly, and maybe enjoy a refreshing hike in the— well, shoot, stumbled upon a amazing experience. And just like that, goodbye to my plans!

A Premature Contender Emerges

With my laid-back sessions, usually reserved for a few oddball curiosities, I've encountered what might become my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that reimagines a traditional dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of significant risk risk and reward. Consider this a hipster's insider tip: If you take pride in knowing about a game before it's cool, sample Sol Cesto so you can make a dent in your indie credit card.

A Strategic Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's unlike anything I've previously experienced. The setup is that you must venture into a dungeon, descending floor after floor in search of the sun, which has vanished from its world. When you play, this results in some recognizable genre framework. Choose an adventurer with their own stats and abilities, fight through each level of enemies, pick up some stat improvements (in the form of teeth), and overcome a few stage-ending champions. Easy to grasp!

The Distinctive Gameplay Loop

How you truly navigate a area, however. Every time you begin a fresh level, you're shown a sixteen-square board of boxes. Every tile either contains a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To proceed, you simply click on one of the four rows, but the specific tile you land in is determined by luck.

You may face a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You start with a quarter likelihood of landing on any given square in a row.

After that, the chances are recalculated. The question becomes: Do you press your luck, or do you choose on a alternative option first and attempt some less risky choices early? Herein lies the tension between chance and safety at play in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating when you acquire its rhythm.

Influencing Chance

The meta-layer is that your odds can be manipulated through a run by gathering teeth that alter which objects you're drawn toward. As an instance, you may obtain a perk that will decrease your odds of hitting a trap, but will also decrease the odds of landing on a reward too.

• Developing a strategy is about tweaking the numbers to the utmost to have a improved likelihood at landing where you want.
• During one attempt, I put all my power boosts toward melee prowess and picked as many teeth I could that would improve my probability of attracting me toward monsters with that damage type.
• During a separate session, I developed my adventurer around treasure chests and combined that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes whenever I claimed a reward.

The build options are limited, but they are sufficient to engage with to let you manipulate numbers to your preference.

An Ever-Present Tension

Unsurprisingly, at its heart, it's a game of chance. You constantly face the risk that you have a high probability to select the desired tile but ultimately choose a monster that would eliminate your last bit of health. All selections is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you clear a floor out and choose whether to press onward or to proceed to the subsequent stage as opposed to testing fate.

Tools such as explosive devices aid in reducing the chance, as do some hero powers. One hero's unique ability, activated once clearing four squares, allows players to select a vertical column in place of a horizontal row during that action. If you play your cards right, you can reserve that option for the right moment to sidestep a dangerous choice. You'll find an astonishing level of strategy in the simple act of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is currently in early access, and it has at least one more update scheduled until the final game is released. An additional hero and a new boss are expected to drop by the end of January. The full launch likely won't be far behind, but the studio haven't announced a concrete launch day yet.

A Final Thought

No matter when the complete game arrives, you should consider put Sol Cesto on your radar. I've been thoroughly captivated with it, discovering its small details and storing my run rewards per attempt to unlock a steady stream of meta progression rewards, including fresh adventurers and items purchasable while playing. I still haven't reached the bottom, and I have a sense I'll still be attempting that goal when 1.0 finally hits. Count me in for the complete journey.