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Having experienced in excess of 200 fresh titles this year, It's time to wrapping things up on 2025. My best-of compilation is out in the world, and I feel content with the concluding selections, even knowing plenty of fantastic releases may have dropped through the cracks. At this point, it's plan is to other than unwind, unplug a little, and maybe enjoy a refreshing hike in the— oh no, found another amazing experience. And just like that, goodbye to my plans!

A Premature Contender Emerges

With my casual gaming time, usually reserved for a handful of quirky titles, I've discovered what could be my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that deconstructs a classic dungeon crawler into a probability-fueled game of significant risk risk and reward. Take this as an early adopter's heads-up: If you enjoy in knowing about a game before it's cool, test out Sol Cesto so you can punch a hole in your wallet for unique titles.

A Tactical Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's unlike anything I've previously experienced. The premise is that you need to explore a dungeon, descending floor after floor to find the sun, which has gone missing from the fantasy world. In practice, that makes for some recognizable genre framework. Pick a hero with their own attributes and skills, defeat enemies on every stage of foes, collect some passive buffs (in the form of teeth), and defeat a few biome bosses. Simple enough!

The Distinctive Core Mechanic

How you actually clear a area, however. Whenever you begin a fresh level, you see a four-by-four matrix of boxes. Every tile holds a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To make a move, you simply click on one of the four rows, but the specific tile you end up on is determined by luck.

You may face a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You initially will have a 25% chance of landing on a specific tile in a row.

Subsequently, your probabilities change. So do you press your luck, or do you choose on a safer line first and try to make safer moves early? This is the tension between chance and safety at play in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating when you acquire an understanding of it.

Manipulating Probability

The roguelike twist is that your odds can be manipulated through a run by collecting teeth that modify the types of squares you're more likely to land on. To illustrate, you might get a perk that will reduce the probability of encountering a trap, but will also decrease the odds of landing on a treasure chest too.

• Developing a strategy is about manipulating math to the utmost to have a better shot at selecting the optimal square.
• On a particular session, I focused my attribute improvements toward brute force and chose every teeth possible that would increase my odds of landing on monsters with that damage type.
• During a separate session, I developed my adventurer around reward boxes and paired that with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies whenever I secured loot.

The strategic possibilities are limited, but there's enough to experiment with to allow you to tweak numbers the way you want.

A Persistent Risk

Unsurprisingly, it's still a game of chance. You constantly face the risk that you have a likely outcome to hit the desired tile but wind up hitting a foe that would deplete your last bit of health. All selections is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you clear a floor out and decide when to press onward or to advance to the subsequent stage instead of testing fate.

Tools such as enemy-killing bombs aid in reducing the chance, just like some special skills. An adventurer's special power, powered up by clearing four squares, enables you to select a vertical column instead of a row for that move. By employing this move wisely, you can reserve that option for a crucial point to sidestep a dangerous choice. There's a shocking degree of depth in the simple act of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is remaining in development, and it has a final update to go until the full version is unleashed. An additional hero and a fresh guardian are expected to drop sometime in January. The full launch likely won't be long after, but the creators haven't set a final date yet.

A Final Thought

Whenever the complete game arrives, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your radar. I've been thoroughly captivated with it, uncovering each of little secrets and banking my earned gold per attempt to access a constant flow of meta progression rewards, including additional heroes and items available for acquisition mid-attempt. To this day, I have not reached the bottom, and I get the feeling I'll still be attempting that goal when the official release drops. Sign me up for the complete journey.