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Having experienced well over 200 fresh titles this year, I'm formally turning the page on 2025. My best-of compilation is out in the world, and I am at peace with the ultimate rankings, despite being aware plenty of stellar titles may have dropped through the cracks. Currently, my only nothing for me to do except relax, disconnect briefly, and possibly go for a nice walk in the— ah crap, discovered one more amazing experience. There go my plans!

A Premature Contender Emerges

In my more casual gaming time, often set aside for a few oddball curiosities, I've discovered potentially my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive roguelike for Windows PC that reimagines a conventional labyrinth explorer into a luck-based game of significant risk risk and reward. Take this as an early adopter's heads-up: If you relish discovering a game before it's popular, give Sol Cesto a try so you can punch a hole in your wallet for unique titles.

A Tactical Genre Subversion

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, going down level by level on a quest for the sun, which has disappeared from the fantasy world. In practice, this creates some standard crawl progression. Select a character who has stats and abilities, clear floor after floor of foes, collect some permanent upgrades (represented as teeth), and overcome a few biome bosses. Easy to grasp!

The Unique Core Mechanic

How you effectively complete a area, though. Each instance you begin a fresh level, the game presents a four-by-four matrix of boxes. Every tile either contains a monster, a treasure chest, 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 may face a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You initially will have a 25% chance of hitting any given square in a row.

Subsequently, your odds shift. So do you press your luck, or do you choose on a different row first and try to make safer moves early? That's the risk-reward dynamic on display in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing once you get an understanding of it.

Shaping the Odds

The roguelike twist is that your odds can be manipulated during an attempt by picking up teeth that modify the types of squares you're more attracted to. As an instance, you could acquire a perk that will lower your chances of encountering a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of landing on a treasure chest too.

• Developing a strategy is about tweaking the numbers to the utmost to have a better shot at getting your desired outcome.
• In one run, I invested my power boosts toward brute force and picked as many teeth possible that would increase my odds of landing on monsters with that damage type.
• In another run, I built my character around reward boxes and paired that with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies each time I opened a chest.

The customization choices are limited, but there's enough to experiment with to enable you to influence probabilities according to your strategy.

An Ever-Present Risk

Unsurprisingly, at its heart, it's a game of chance. You constantly face the risk that you have an 80% chance to hit the square you want but wind up hitting a monster that would eliminate your final hit point. All selections is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you work through a stage and decide when to continue selecting or to advance to the subsequent stage as opposed to pushing your luck.

Consumables including explosive devices aid in reducing the chance, as do some special skills. One hero's unique ability, activated once clearing four squares, allows players to choose a column rather than a row during that action. If you play this strategically, you can save that move for the right moment to circumvent a perilous selection. There's a shocking degree of depth in the basic action of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is remaining in development, and it has a final update to go before the complete edition is released. A new character and a new boss are expected to drop by the end of January. The official version may not be long after, but the creators haven't set a final date yet.

A Final Recommendation

Whenever it's fully released, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your radar. I have been completely engrossed with it, finding all of little secrets and storing my run rewards per attempt to reveal a continuous trickle of permanent unlocks, featuring new characters and items purchasable during a run. I still haven't found the deepest level, and I suspect I'll still be pursuing that objective when the full version launches. I'm committed for the complete journey.