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Following my time with more than 200 recent games this year, I am officially wrapping things up on 2025. My annual roundup is out in the world, and I feel content with the concluding selections, despite being aware plenty of excellent games likely fell through the cracks. At this point, it's nothing for me to do except relax, take a short break, and perhaps take a pleasant stroll in the— ah crap, discovered one more brilliant title. And just like that, goodbye to my plans!

A Premature Favorite Surfaces

During my off-hours play, usually reserved for a handful of quirky titles, I've come across potentially my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a traditional dungeon crawler into a probability-fueled game of major consequence danger and payoff. Consider this a hipster's insider tip: If you take pride being aware of a game before it hits the mainstream, test out Sol Cesto so you can make a dent in your indie credit card.

A Strategic Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's different from everything I've previously experienced. The premise is that you must venture into a dungeon, going down level by level in search of the sun, which has vanished from this mythical realm. Mechanically, that makes for some familiar roguelike structure. Choose an adventurer with their own attributes and skills, clear floor after floor of foes, pick up some stat improvements (represented as teeth), and overcome a few biome bosses. Easy to grasp!

The Unique Core Mechanic

How you effectively complete a dungeon room, is unique. Each instance you enter a new floor, you see a 4x4 grid of boxes. Every tile holds a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To explore a room, you choose on one of the horizontal lines, but which square you end up on is up to chance.

You might see a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You begin with a quarter likelihood of selecting a specific tile in a row.

After that, the odds shift. So do you go for it, or do you opt on a safer line first and attempt some less risky choices early? This is the push-your-luck gameplay in action in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing when you acquire its rhythm.

Manipulating Probability

The meta-layer is that your probabilities can be influenced over the course of a session by gathering teeth that alter which objects you're more likely to land on. As an instance, you might get a perk that will lower your chances of hitting a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of landing on a treasure chest too.

• Developing a strategy is about influencing the statistics optimally to have a higher chance at landing where you want.
• In one run, I focused my power boosts toward physical attack/defense and picked as many teeth possible that would boost my chances of being drawn to monsters aligned with that strength.
• In another run, I built my character around treasure chests and paired that with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies each time I claimed a reward.

The strategic possibilities are limited, but it provides ample to engage with to enable you to influence the odds the way you want.

A Constant Tension

Unsurprisingly, it remains a game of chance. You constantly face the risk that you have a high probability to hit the square you want but end up landing a foe that would take out your remaining life. All selections is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you work through a stage and choose whether to press onward or when to move on to the following level as opposed to risking it all.

Tools such as explosive devices aid in reducing the chance, as do some character abilities. An adventurer's special power, powered up by making four moves, enables you to choose a vertical column rather than a horizontal row on a turn. If you play this move wisely, you can reserve that option for the right moment to circumvent a perilous selection. It's a surprising amount of nuance in the basic action of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is currently in its preview phase, and it has at least one more update to go until the complete edition is launched. A new character and a new boss are planned for release before the conclusion of January. The full launch may not be long after, but the creators haven't announced a specific release window yet.

A Concluding Thought

Regardless of when its 1.0 launch occurs, you should consider put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I've been positively obsessed with it, finding all of small details and banking my earned gold in each run to access a constant flow of permanent unlocks, such as new characters and items purchasable during a run. As of now, I am yet to completed the dungeon, and I suspect I'll continue pursuing that objective when 1.0 finally hits. Count me in for the long haul.