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Having experienced in excess of 200 recent games this year, It's time to wrapping things up on 2025. My best-of compilation is live, and I feel content with the concluding selections, despite being aware numerous stellar titles probably slipped by the wayside. At this point, it's job is to except relax, unplug a little, and perhaps take a nice walk in the— well, shoot, discovered one more brilliant title. There go my peaceful respite!

An Early Contender Emerges

During my laid-back sessions, usually reserved for a handful of quirky titles, I've encountered potentially my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive roguelike for Windows PC that reimagines a conventional dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of high stakes danger and payoff. Take this as a preview for the in-the-know: If you enjoy being aware of a game before it's popular, give Sol Cesto a try so you can make a dent in your wallet for unique titles.

A Calculated Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's unlike anything I've ever played. The premise is that you need to explore a dungeon, going down level by level to find the sun, which has disappeared from this mythical realm. In practice, this creates some recognizable genre framework. Choose an adventurer with their own attributes and skills, clear floor after floor of foes, pick up some stat improvements (represented as teeth), and defeat a few area guardians. Easy to grasp!

The Novel Gameplay Loop

How you actually clear a chamber, is unique. Every time you start another stage, you're shown a 4x4 grid of boxes. All spaces either contains a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To proceed, you simply click on one of the horizontal lines, but the exact space you end up on is determined by luck.

You may face a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You begin with a one-in-four probability of landing on any given square in a row.

Then, you'll probabilities change. The question becomes: Do you press your luck, or do you click on a safer line first and attempt some more cautious selections early? This is the risk-reward dynamic at play in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating once you get an understanding of it.

Manipulating Probability

The meta-layer is that your percentages can be shaped over the course of a session by picking up teeth that modify the types of squares you're drawn toward. As an instance, you could acquire a perk that will reduce the probability of hitting a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of getting a reward too.

• Developing a strategy is about influencing the statistics optimally to have a higher chance at selecting the optimal square.
• During one attempt, I put all my power boosts toward melee prowess and chose every teeth possible that would improve my probability of landing on monsters with that damage type.
• In another run, I developed my adventurer around loot caches and paired that with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters whenever I claimed a reward.

The customization choices are not endless, but there's enough to work with to enable you to influence numbers to your preference.

An Ever-Present Risk

Naturally, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There remains the risk that you have an 80% chance to select the desired tile but ultimately choose a monster that would eliminate your last bit of health. All selections is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you navigate a level and determine if to continue selecting or when to move on to the subsequent stage as opposed to risking it all.

Consumables including explosive devices help cut down the chance, just like some hero powers. A particular character's unique ability, powered up by making four moves, enables you to click on a vertical column instead of a horizontal row for that move. If you play this move wisely, you can reserve that option for a crucial point to sidestep a dangerous choice. It's a surprising level of strategy in the simple act of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is remaining in development, and it has another update planned before the final game is launched. An additional hero and a additional end-level foe are scheduled to arrive by the end of January. The full launch probably isn't far behind, but the studio haven't set a concrete launch day yet.

A Final Endorsement

Regardless of when it's fully released, 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 saving my accumulated currency per attempt to reveal a continuous trickle of permanent unlocks, such as fresh adventurers and items I can buy during a run. As of now, I am yet to completed the dungeon, and I suspect I'll still be pursuing that objective when 1.0 finally hits. Sign me up for the complete journey.