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Following my time with more than 200 new releases this year, It's time to closing the book on 2025. My year-end list is out in the world, and I feel content with the concluding selections, even knowing a host of fantastic releases probably slipped through the cracks. Now, there's job is to but sit back, unplug a little, and maybe enjoy a nice walk in the— ah crap, discovered one more amazing experience. And just like that, goodbye to my intentions!

A Surprising Front-Runner Appears

During my off-hours play, typically earmarked for a selection of unusual games, I've come across what might become my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a conventional dungeon crawler into a probability-fueled game of major consequence risk and reward. Take this as an early adopter's heads-up: If you take pride discovering a game before it hits the mainstream, test out Sol Cesto so you can burn a spot in your indie credit card.

A Strategic Dungeon-Crawling Innovation

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's different from everything I've previously experienced. The premise is that you need to explore a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper on a quest for the sun, which has vanished from its world. When you play, this results in some familiar roguelike structure. Pick a hero possessing unique attributes and skills, fight through each level of monsters, pick up some stat improvements (which are teeth), and defeat a few area guardians. Straightforward, right!

The Unique Central System

The method by which you truly navigate a area, though. Every time you start another stage, you see a four-by-four matrix of boxes. Every tile either contains a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To explore a room, you just select on one of the four rows, but which square you land in is determined by luck.

You could encounter a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You start with a quarter likelihood of hitting a particular space in a row.

Then, you'll chances are recalculated. So do you take the risk, or do you opt on a safer line first and aim for more cautious selections early? That's the push-your-luck gameplay on display in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating once you get its rhythm.

Influencing Chance

The roguelike twist is that your percentages can be shaped during an attempt by collecting teeth that modify the types of squares you're more attracted to. To illustrate, you may obtain a perk that will decrease your odds of encountering a trap, but will also decrease the odds of landing on a reward too.

• Crafting a loadout is about manipulating math optimally to have a higher chance at landing where you want.
• During one attempt, I focused my power boosts toward brute force and selected all the teeth I could that would improve my probability of being drawn to monsters with that damage type.
• On a different attempt, I developed my adventurer around treasure chests and coupled it with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies every time I claimed a reward.

The strategic possibilities are limited, but it provides ample to experiment with to enable you to influence the odds according to your strategy.

An Ever-Present Risk

Of course, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There's always the chance that you have a high probability to select the desired tile but end up landing a monster that would take out your last bit of health. Each click is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you work through a stage and choose whether to press onward or to proceed to the next floor rather than testing fate.

Items like destructive ordnance assist in minimizing the chance, similar to some special skills. A particular character's special power, activated once clearing four squares, lets gamers to choose a column rather than a row on a turn. If you play your cards right, you can hold that ability for the right moment to circumvent a perilous selection. There's a shocking amount of nuance in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is currently in early access, and it has a final update scheduled until the final game is unleashed. Another playable adventurer and a additional end-level foe are expected to drop before the conclusion of January. The 1.0 release may not be much later, but the creators haven't announced a concrete launch day yet.

A Parting Thought

No matter when its 1.0 launch occurs, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. For the past week, I've been completely engrossed with it, finding all of little secrets and banking my earned gold in each run to unlock a steady stream of meta progression rewards, including additional heroes and items I can buy while playing. To this day, I have not found the deepest level, and I have a sense I'll continue working on that task when the full version launches. Sign me up for the entire experience.