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Having experienced well over 200 new releases this year, I am officially turning the page on 2025. My year-end list is out in the world, and I feel content with the ultimate rankings, despite being aware numerous stellar titles may have dropped under the radar. At this point, it's plan is to other than unwind, unplug a little, and maybe enjoy a refreshing hike in the— well, shoot, discovered one more amazing experience. And just like that, goodbye to my intentions!

An Early Contender Emerges

With my casual gaming time, often set aside for a handful of quirky titles, I've discovered what could be my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that reimagines a classic labyrinth explorer into a chance-driven game of major consequence risk and reward. Consider this a preview for the in-the-know: If you relish 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 Tactical Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's different from everything I'm familiar with. The premise is that you need to explore a dungeon, descending floor after floor on a quest for the sun, which has disappeared from the fantasy world. In practice, that makes for some familiar roguelike structure. Pick a hero with their own attributes and skills, clear floor after floor of foes, pick up some passive buffs (in the form of teeth), and vanquish a few area guardians. Straightforward, right!

The Unique Gameplay Loop

The way you truly navigate a area, is unique. Whenever you enter a new floor, you see a four-by-four matrix of boxes. Every tile either contains a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To make a move, you choose on one of the horizontal lines, but the specific tile you end up on is determined by luck.

You could encounter a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You begin with a 25% chance of landing on a specific tile in a row.

After that, the probabilities change. So do you press your luck, or do you opt on a different row first and aim for more cautious selections early? This is the tension between chance and safety in action in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing once you get a feel for it.

Influencing Chance

The roguelike twist is that your percentages can be shaped through a run by picking up teeth that change what things you're drawn toward. For example, you might get a perk that will lower your chances of encountering a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of finding a treasure chest too.

• Developing a strategy is about tweaking the numbers optimally to have a better shot at getting your desired outcome.
• During one attempt, I put all my attribute improvements toward brute force and picked as many teeth I could that would improve my probability of being drawn to monsters with that damage type.
• On a different attempt, I developed my adventurer around loot caches and coupled it with a perk that would debuff nearby foes every time I opened a chest.

The build options are somewhat constrained, but there's enough to work with to allow you to tweak the odds according to your strategy.

A Persistent Gamble

Unsurprisingly, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There remains the possibility that you have a high probability to select the preferred space but end up landing a foe that would take out your last bit of health. All selections is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you clear a floor out and determine if to press onward or to advance to the subsequent stage as opposed to pushing your luck.

Tools such as destructive ordnance assist in minimizing the chance, as do some special skills. One hero's unique ability, activated once making four moves, lets gamers to click on a vertical column in place of a horizontal row during that action. If you play this move wisely, you can hold that ability for the right moment to avoid a risky decision. It's a surprising degree of depth in the simple act of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is currently in early access, and it has at least one more update scheduled until the final game is unleashed. Another playable adventurer and a new boss are expected to drop by the end of January. The official version may not be far behind, but the creators haven't committed to a specific release window yet.

A Concluding Endorsement

Whenever it's fully released, you should consider put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I've been positively obsessed with it, uncovering each of little secrets and storing my run rewards every session to access a constant flow of meta progression rewards, including fresh adventurers and items purchasable mid-attempt. To this day, I have not reached the bottom, and I have a sense I'll continue working on that task when 1.0 finally hits. I'm committed for the long haul.