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Following my time with in excess of 200 recent games this year, It's time to wrapping things up on 2025. My year-end list is published, and I feel content with the ultimate rankings, accepting that plenty of excellent games probably slipped through the cracks. At this point, it's nothing for me to do except relax, unplug a little, and possibly go for a nice walk in the— ah crap, discovered one more great game. There go my intentions!

A Premature Contender Emerges

In my more casual gaming time, often set aside for a few oddball curiosities, I've come across what could be my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a traditional dungeon crawler into a luck-based game of major consequence peril and prize. View this a preview for the in-the-know: If you enjoy being aware of a game before it's cool, give Sol Cesto a try so you can punch a hole in your gaming budget.

A Tactical Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's different from everything I've ever played. The concept is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, going down level by level on a quest for the sun, which has vanished from the fantasy world. When you play, that makes for some recognizable genre framework. Choose an adventurer with their own attributes and skills, defeat enemies on every stage of monsters, acquire some permanent upgrades (represented as teeth), and vanquish a few area guardians. Simple enough!

The Unique Gameplay Loop

How you effectively complete a area, is unique. Every time you start another stage, you see a 4x4 grid of boxes. All spaces features a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To explore a room, you just select on one of the horizontal lines, but which square you select is up to chance.

You may face a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You begin with a 25% chance of selecting any given square in a row.

Subsequently, your odds shift. So do you press your luck, or do you opt on a alternative option first and attempt some less risky choices early? This is the tension between chance and safety on display in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating after you develop an understanding of it.

Shaping the Odds

The procedural hook is that your percentages can be shaped over the course of a session by collecting teeth that alter which objects you're more likely to land on. As an instance, you might get a perk that will decrease your odds of landing on a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of getting a treasure chest too.

• Developing a strategy is about influencing the statistics as best you can to have a higher chance at landing where you want.
• In one run, I invested my attribute improvements toward physical attack/defense and picked as many teeth I could that would improve my probability of attracting me toward monsters with that damage type.
• During a separate session, I built my character around reward boxes and coupled it with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies every time I claimed a reward.

The build options are not endless, but there's enough to work with to let you manipulate the odds according to your strategy.

A Persistent Gamble

Unsurprisingly, it's still a game of chance. There remains the possibility that you have an 80% chance to hit the desired tile but ultimately choose a monster that would deplete your remaining life. All selections is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you clear a floor out and choose whether to continue selecting or to advance to the following level instead of risking it all.

Consumables including destructive ordnance help cut down the chance, just like some hero powers. An adventurer's unique ability, charged after clearing four squares, allows players to click on a vertical column rather than a row during that action. By employing this strategically, you can hold that ability for an optimal time to avoid a risky decision. It's a surprising level of strategy in the simple act of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is currently in its preview phase, and it has another update to go before the complete edition is unleashed. An additional hero and a new boss are scheduled to arrive by the end of January. The official version likely won't be far behind, but the studio haven't set a specific release window yet.

A Concluding Thought

Whenever the complete game arrives, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I've been thoroughly captivated with it, finding all of hidden nuances and saving my accumulated currency in each run to reveal a continuous trickle of permanent unlocks, including new characters and items I can buy during a run. To this day, I have not reached the bottom, and I have a sense I'll continue pursuing that objective when the full version launches. Sign me up for the entire experience.