🔗 Share this article

After playing well over 200 new releases this year, I am officially wrapping things up on 2025. My annual roundup is live, and I'm satisfied with the concluding selections, accepting that a host of fantastic releases probably slipped by the wayside. Currently, my only plan is to except relax, take a short break, and possibly go for a pleasant stroll in the— oh no, stumbled upon a great game. There go my peaceful respite!

An Early Front-Runner Appears

During my laid-back sessions, often set aside for a selection of unusual games, I've discovered potentially my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual roguelike for Windows PC that reimagines a traditional labyrinth explorer into a probability-fueled game of high stakes risk and reward. View this a preview for the in-the-know: If you enjoy discovering a game before it hits the mainstream, 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'm familiar with. The setup is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper to find the sun, which has vanished from this mythical realm. Mechanically, this results in some standard crawl progression. Choose an adventurer with their own parameters and powers, defeat enemies on every stage of enemies, collect some permanent upgrades (in the form of teeth), and vanquish a few area guardians. Simple enough!

The Distinctive Gameplay Loop

The method by which you effectively complete a area, though. Every time you enter a new floor, the game presents a 4x4 grid of boxes. All spaces holds a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To explore a room, you simply click on one of the horizontal lines, but the specific tile you end up on is up to chance.

You could encounter a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You start with a one-in-four probability of landing on a specific tile in a row.

After that, the probabilities change. So do you go for it, or do you choose on a safer line first and aim for safer moves early? That's the push-your-luck gameplay on display in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating when you acquire an understanding of it.

Shaping the Odds

The meta-layer is that your probabilities can be influenced during an attempt by gathering teeth that modify the types of squares you're more attracted to. For example, you may obtain a perk that will lower your chances of landing on a trap, but will also decrease the odds of landing on a reward too.

• Creating a build is about tweaking the numbers to the utmost to have a better shot at getting your desired outcome.
• On a particular session, I invested my stat upgrades toward melee prowess and selected all the teeth possible that would improve my probability of landing on monsters of that variety.
• In another run, I constructed my hero around reward boxes and paired that with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters every time I opened a chest.

The build options are limited, but they are sufficient to experiment with to enable you to influence probabilities according to your strategy.

A Constant Gamble

Unsurprisingly, it's still a game of chance. There remains the risk that you have an 80% chance to land on the desired tile but wind up hitting on an enemy that would eliminate your final hit point. Every move is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you work through a stage and decide when to keep clicking or to proceed to the subsequent stage instead of risking it all.

Items like enemy-killing bombs assist in minimizing the chance, as do some character abilities. A particular character's special power, charged after making four moves, allows players to choose a vertical line rather than a horizontal row on a turn. If you play this strategically, you can hold that ability for an optimal time to avoid a risky decision. You'll find an astonishing amount of nuance in the basic action of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is remaining in development, and it has at least one more update scheduled before the final game is released. A new character and a new boss are scheduled to arrive sometime in January. The full launch may not be far behind, but the creators haven't set a final date yet.

A Final Endorsement

No matter when it's fully released, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your radar. For the past week, I've been thoroughly captivated with it, uncovering each of little secrets and saving my accumulated currency in each run to unlock a steady stream of permanent unlocks, including new characters and items available for acquisition mid-attempt. To this day, I have not found the deepest level, and I get the feeling I will remain pursuing that objective when the official release drops. I'm committed for the long haul.