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Following my time with in excess of 200 new releases this year, I am officially wrapping things up on 2025. My best-of compilation is out in the world, and I feel content with the final results, despite being aware a host of fantastic releases probably slipped through the cracks. Now, there's job is to but sit back, unplug a little, and possibly go for a nice walk in the— oh no, discovered one more great game. There go my intentions!

A Surprising Contender Emerges

In my more casual gaming time, typically earmarked for a few oddball curiosities, I've encountered potentially my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive roguelike for Windows PC that reimagines a conventional dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of significant risk peril and prize. Consider this a hipster's insider tip: If you take pride in knowing about a game before it's popular, give Sol Cesto a try so you can punch a hole in your gaming budget.

A Tactical Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's a departure from all I've ever played. The concept is that you must venture into a dungeon, descending floor after floor to find the sun, which has vanished from the fantasy world. Mechanically, this creates some standard crawl progression. Select a character possessing unique parameters and powers, clear floor after floor of foes, collect some passive buffs (represented as teeth), and defeat a few stage-ending champions. Simple enough!

The Novel Core Mechanic

The method by which you truly navigate a area, however. Each instance you begin a fresh level, you're shown a 4x4 grid of boxes. Each square features a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To explore a room, you just select on one of the horizontal lines, but which square you land in is up to chance.

You might see a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You initially will have a one-in-four probability of hitting a particular space in a row.

After that, the chances are recalculated. The question becomes: Do you take the risk, or do you choose on a different row first and aim for more cautious selections early? Herein lies the tension between chance and safety in action in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing when you acquire its rhythm.

Influencing Chance

The procedural hook is that your odds can be manipulated over the course of a session by collecting teeth that change what things you're more attracted to. For example, you could acquire a perk that will decrease your odds of landing on a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of getting a reward too.

• Developing a strategy is about influencing the statistics to the utmost to have a higher chance at selecting the optimal square.
• During one attempt, I put all my power boosts toward brute force and picked as many teeth I could that would boost my chances of landing on monsters with that damage type.
• In another run, I built my character around loot caches and coupled it with a perk that would debuff nearby foes every time I claimed a reward.

The strategic possibilities are somewhat constrained, but they are sufficient to experiment with to enable you to influence the odds the way you want.

A Persistent Tension

Naturally, it remains a game of chance. There's always the chance that you have a high probability to hit the square you want but wind up hitting on an enemy 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 press onward or when to move on to the next floor as opposed to risking it all.

Consumables including explosive devices assist in minimizing the chance, just like some character abilities. A particular character's signature move, powered up by selecting four tiles, allows players to select a vertical line rather than a row during that action. If you play this strategically, you can hold that ability for an optimal time to sidestep a dangerous choice. You'll find an astonishing level of strategy in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is currently in development, and it has at least one more update to go until the full version is unleashed. A new character and a additional end-level foe are planned for release before the conclusion of January. The full launch probably isn't much later, but the creators haven't set a specific release window yet.

A Final Recommendation

No matter when the complete game arrives, you should consider put Sol Cesto in your sights. I've been thoroughly captivated with it, discovering its hidden nuances and saving my accumulated currency in each run to reveal a continuous trickle of persistent upgrades, including additional heroes and items available for acquisition during a run. To this day, I have not reached the bottom, and I suspect I'll still be pursuing that objective when the official release drops. I'm committed for the entire experience.