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After playing well over 200 fresh titles this year, I am officially closing the book on 2025. My annual roundup is live, and I feel content with the final results, accepting that a host of excellent games may have dropped by the wayside. Now, there's nothing for me to do other than unwind, disconnect briefly, and perhaps take a refreshing hike in the— ah crap, discovered one more brilliant title. There go my plans!

An Early Favorite Surfaces

With my casual gaming time, usually reserved for a handful of quirky titles, I've come across what could be my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a conventional labyrinth explorer into a chance-driven game of high stakes risk and reward. View this a preview for the in-the-know: If you enjoy in knowing about a game before it's cool, give Sol Cesto a try so you can burn a spot in your gaming budget.

A Calculated Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's different from everything I've ever played. The concept is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper to find the sun, which has disappeared from this mythical realm. Mechanically, this results in some recognizable genre framework. Choose an adventurer possessing unique stats and abilities, defeat enemies on every stage of monsters, pick up some permanent upgrades (in the form of teeth), and overcome a few area guardians. Straightforward, right!

The Novel Core Mechanic

How you truly navigate a chamber, however. Each instance you start another stage, you're shown a 4x4 grid of boxes. Each square features a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To explore a room, you just select on one of the four rows, but the exact space you select is a matter of probability.

You might see a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You begin with a one-in-four probability of selecting a specific tile in a row.

Then, you'll probabilities change. So do you press your luck, or do you opt on a different row first and attempt some less risky choices early? Herein lies the push-your-luck gameplay in action in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing once you get its rhythm.

Influencing Chance

The roguelike twist is that your probabilities can be influenced over the course of a session by collecting teeth that modify the types of squares you're drawn toward. For example, you may obtain a perk that will lower your chances of hitting a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of landing on a reward too.

• Creating a build is about influencing the statistics optimally to have a higher chance at selecting the optimal square.
• On a particular session, I put all my stat upgrades toward brute force and selected all the teeth I could that would increase my odds of landing on monsters with that damage type.
• On a different attempt, I developed my adventurer around treasure chests and paired that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes every time I claimed a reward.

The strategic possibilities are limited, but there's enough to engage with to allow you to tweak probabilities to your preference.

A Persistent Risk

Unsurprisingly, it's still a game of chance. There's always the chance that you have a likely outcome to land on the desired tile but wind up hitting a monster that would eliminate your final hit point. Each click is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you navigate a level and determine if to press onward or when to move on to the subsequent stage instead of testing fate.

Items like explosive devices assist in minimizing the chance, just like some hero powers. An adventurer's special power, charged after selecting four tiles, enables you to select a column rather than a horizontal line for that move. By employing your cards right, you can hold that ability for the right moment to circumvent a perilous selection. It's a surprising degree of depth in the simple act of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is still in its preview phase, and it has a final update scheduled before the final game is launched. Another playable adventurer and a additional end-level foe are expected to drop sometime in January. The full launch may not be far behind, but the game's developers haven't set a concrete launch day yet.

A Final Endorsement

Whenever it's fully released, you should consider put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I have been positively obsessed with it, uncovering each of hidden nuances and banking my earned gold in each run to access a constant flow of persistent upgrades, such as new characters and items purchasable while playing. I still haven't reached the bottom, and I have a sense I'll continue pursuing that objective when the official release drops. I'm committed for the long haul.