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Following my time with more than 200 new releases this year, I am officially wrapping things up on 2025. My best-of compilation is out in the world, and I am at peace with the final results, despite being aware numerous fantastic releases probably slipped by the wayside. At this point, it's nothing for me to do other than unwind, unplug a little, and perhaps take a refreshing hike in the— ah crap, discovered one more amazing experience. And just like that, goodbye to my peaceful respite!

A Surprising Favorite Surfaces

During my off-hours play, typically earmarked for a few oddball curiosities, I've come across what might become my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a traditional dungeon crawler into a luck-based game of significant risk peril and prize. Take this as a preview for the in-the-know: If you enjoy discovering a game before it's popular, give Sol Cesto a try so you can make a dent in your wallet for unique titles.

A Tactical Dungeon-Crawling Innovation

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike 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 on a quest for the sun, which has gone missing from its world. Mechanically, that makes for some standard crawl progression. Choose an adventurer with their own attributes and skills, fight through each level of foes, collect some permanent upgrades (which are teeth), and vanquish a few stage-ending champions. Easy to grasp!

The Distinctive Core Mechanic

How you effectively complete a dungeon room, is unique. Whenever you begin a fresh level, the game presents a 4x4 grid of boxes. Every tile either contains a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To proceed, you choose on one of the four rows, but the specific tile you land in is up to chance.

You might see a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You start with a quarter likelihood of landing on a particular space in a row.

Subsequently, your probabilities change. The question becomes: Do you go for it, or do you opt on a alternative option first and attempt some safer moves early? Herein lies the risk-reward dynamic on display in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating when you acquire a feel for it.

Manipulating Probability

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

• Creating a build is about tweaking the numbers optimally to have a improved likelihood at selecting the optimal square.
• On a particular session, I focused my stat upgrades toward melee prowess and chose every teeth possible that would increase my odds of being drawn to monsters of that variety.
• During a separate session, I constructed my hero around reward boxes and paired that with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies whenever I opened a chest.

The strategic possibilities are limited, but there's enough to experiment with to allow you to tweak the odds the way you want.

An Ever-Present Tension

Unsurprisingly, it remains a game of chance. There remains the chance that you have a high probability to select the square you want but wind up hitting a foe that would take out your final hit point. Each click is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you work through a stage and determine if to continue selecting or to advance to the following level instead of pushing your luck.

Tools such as explosive devices help cut down the chance, just like some hero powers. An adventurer's unique ability, activated once selecting four tiles, lets gamers to click on a vertical line in place of a horizontal line on a turn. If you play your cards right, you can hold that ability for a crucial point to sidestep a dangerous choice. There's a shocking degree of depth in the basic action of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is remaining in its preview phase, and it has at least one more update to go before the full version is launched. Another playable adventurer and a fresh guardian are scheduled to arrive by the end of January. The official version probably isn't far behind, but the studio haven't set a concrete launch day yet.

A Final Thought

Whenever it's fully released, you might want to put Sol Cesto in your sights. I've been completely engrossed with it, uncovering each of little secrets and saving my accumulated currency per attempt to access a constant flow of permanent unlocks, featuring new characters and items I can buy mid-attempt. To this day, I have not found the deepest level, and I suspect I will remain pursuing that objective when the official release drops. Count me in for the long haul.