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Having experienced more than 200 recent games this year, It's time to wrapping things up on 2025. My best-of compilation is live, and I feel content with the ultimate rankings, despite being aware plenty of stellar titles may have dropped by the wayside. Currently, my only nothing for me to do but sit back, unplug a little, and possibly go for a nice walk in the— ah crap, discovered one more brilliant title. There go my peaceful respite!

An Early Contender Emerges

In my more laid-back sessions, typically earmarked for a handful of quirky titles, I've come across what could be my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar roguelike for Windows PC that reimagines a traditional dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of major consequence risk and reward. Take this as an early adopter's heads-up: If you take pride discovering a game before it hits the mainstream, sample Sol Cesto so you can punch a hole in your wallet for unique titles.

A Calculated Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's a departure from all I'm familiar with. The concept is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, going down level by level to find the sun, which has gone missing from this mythical realm. Mechanically, this results in some standard crawl progression. Select a character possessing unique attributes and skills, defeat enemies on every stage of monsters, pick up some permanent upgrades (in the form of teeth), and overcome a few area guardians. Easy to grasp!

The Novel Central System

The method by which you effectively complete a chamber, is unique. Each instance you begin a fresh level, you're shown a sixteen-square board of boxes. Each square either contains 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 exact space you end up on is up to chance.

You may face a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You start with a one-in-four probability of selecting a specific tile in a row.

Then, you'll probabilities change. The question becomes: Do you press your luck, or do you click on a safer line first and try to make more cautious selections early? This is the risk-reward dynamic at play in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating when you acquire a feel for it.

Influencing Chance

The procedural hook is that your percentages can be shaped through a run by gathering teeth that modify the types of squares you're more likely to land on. For example, you could acquire a perk that will lower your chances of encountering a trap, but will also decrease the odds of landing on a reward too.

• Creating a build is about manipulating math as best you can to have a better shot at selecting the optimal square.
• In one run, I invested my power boosts toward melee prowess and selected all the teeth possible that would boost my chances of landing on monsters aligned with that strength.
• In another run, I built my character around loot caches and coupled it with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters each time I claimed a reward.

The customization choices are somewhat constrained, but they are sufficient to work with to let you manipulate the odds the way you want.

An Ever-Present Tension

Unsurprisingly, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There remains the possibility that you have an 80% chance to land on the preferred space but wind up hitting a monster that would deplete your final hit point. Each click is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you navigate a level and decide when to keep clicking or when to move on to the subsequent stage as opposed to risking it all.

Items like enemy-killing bombs help cut down the chance, as do some character abilities. One hero's signature move, activated once making four moves, lets gamers to click on a vertical line rather than a horizontal row on a turn. By employing this move wisely, you can save that move for an optimal time to circumvent a perilous selection. It's a surprising amount of nuance in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is still in its preview phase, and it has at least one more update to go until the full version is launched. An additional hero and a additional end-level foe are expected to drop sometime in January. The full launch probably isn't long after, but the creators haven't committed to a specific release window yet.

A Concluding Thought

Whenever it's fully released, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. For the past week, I've been completely engrossed with it, uncovering each of hidden nuances and saving my accumulated currency per attempt to unlock a steady stream of permanent unlocks, such as additional heroes and items I can buy mid-attempt. As of now, I am yet to found the deepest level, and I suspect I will remain pursuing that objective when 1.0 finally hits. I'm committed for the entire experience.