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Having experienced in excess of 200 fresh titles this year, I am officially closing the book on 2025. My best-of compilation is out in the world, and I'm satisfied with the ultimate rankings, despite being aware numerous excellent games likely fell by the wayside. Now, there's job is to but sit back, unplug a little, and maybe enjoy a pleasant stroll in the— ah crap, discovered one more great game. And just like that, goodbye to my intentions!

An Early Front-Runner Appears

During my casual gaming time, often set aside for a handful of quirky titles, I've encountered what could be my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a traditional dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of major consequence danger and payoff. Consider this an early adopter's heads-up: If you take pride in knowing about a game before it's cool, give Sol Cesto a try so you can make a dent in your wallet for unique titles.

A Tactical Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's a departure from all I'm familiar with. The premise is that you must venture into a dungeon, descending floor after floor on a quest for the sun, which has disappeared from the fantasy world. In practice, this results in some familiar roguelike structure. Pick a hero with their own stats and abilities, clear floor after floor of foes, pick up some permanent upgrades (in the form of teeth), and overcome a few biome bosses. Easy to grasp!

The Unique Core Mechanic

How you actually clear a dungeon room, is unique. Each instance you begin a fresh level, you see a sixteen-square board of boxes. Each square holds a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To proceed, you just select on one of the four rows, but the specific tile you land in is a matter of probability.

You may face a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You start with a 25% chance of selecting a particular space in a row.

Then, you'll chances are recalculated. The question becomes: Do you go for it, or do you choose on a safer line first and aim for safer moves early? That's the risk-reward dynamic in action in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing after you develop its rhythm.

Shaping the Odds

The meta-layer is that your percentages can be shaped over the course of a session by picking up teeth that change what things you're more likely to land on. To illustrate, you may obtain a perk that will reduce the probability of hitting a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of landing on a reward too.

• Crafting a loadout is about tweaking the numbers to the utmost to have a higher chance at getting your desired outcome.
• On a particular session, I focused my power boosts toward physical attack/defense and selected all the teeth I could that would boost my chances of attracting me toward monsters aligned with that strength.
• During a separate session, I built my character around reward boxes and combined that with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies each time I claimed a reward.

The strategic possibilities are not endless, but it provides ample to experiment with to enable you to influence the odds to your preference.

An Ever-Present Tension

Unsurprisingly, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There's always the possibility that you have a high probability to land on the preferred space but ultimately choose on an enemy that would eliminate your last bit of health. Each click is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you clear a floor out and decide when to keep clicking or to advance to the following level as opposed to pushing your luck.

Items like explosive devices help cut down the chance, just like some character abilities. An adventurer's signature move, charged after clearing four squares, allows players to choose a column in place of a row on a turn. If you play your cards right, you can save that move for the right moment to avoid a risky decision. You'll find an astonishing amount of nuance in the basic action of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is currently in its preview phase, and it has another update scheduled until the final game is unleashed. An additional hero and a additional end-level foe are scheduled to arrive sometime in January. The official version may not be much later, but the creators haven't committed to a specific release window yet.

A Concluding Recommendation

Whenever its 1.0 launch occurs, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your radar. I've been thoroughly captivated with it, finding all of small details and storing my run rewards per attempt to access a constant flow of meta progression rewards, featuring additional heroes and items available for acquisition during a run. To this day, I have not found the deepest level, and I suspect I will remain attempting that goal when 1.0 finally hits. Sign me up for the entire experience.