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Having experienced more than 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'm satisfied with the concluding selections, despite being aware a host of excellent games likely fell through the cracks. At this point, it's job is to but sit back, unplug a little, and perhaps take a nice walk in the— ah crap, stumbled upon a amazing experience. There go my peaceful respite!

A Surprising Favorite Surfaces

In my more off-hours play, often set aside for a handful of quirky titles, I've encountered what might become my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual roguelike for Windows PC that breaks down a traditional dungeon crawler into a probability-fueled game of significant risk danger and payoff. Take this as a preview for the in-the-know: If you take pride in knowing about a game before it hits the mainstream, 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 different from everything I've ever played. The concept is that you must venture into a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper on a quest for the sun, which has disappeared from the fantasy world. Mechanically, this results in some familiar roguelike structure. Select a character possessing unique attributes and skills, fight through each level of foes, collect some passive buffs (in the form of teeth), and overcome a few area guardians. Easy to grasp!

The Distinctive Gameplay Loop

The method by which you actually clear a chamber, is unique. Every time you enter a new floor, the game presents a 4x4 grid of boxes. Every tile holds a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To proceed, you simply click on one of the four rows, but the exact space you land in is up to chance.

You might see a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You initially will have a quarter likelihood of hitting a specific tile in a row.

Subsequently, your odds shift. The question becomes: Do you go for it, or do you opt on a different row first and try to make safer moves early? This is the tension between chance and safety at play in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing once you get its rhythm.

Influencing Chance

The procedural hook is that your probabilities can be influenced through a run by collecting teeth that change what things you're drawn toward. As an instance, you may obtain a perk that will lower your chances of hitting a trap, but will also decrease the odds of getting a reward too.

• Developing a strategy is about influencing the statistics to the utmost to have a better shot at selecting the optimal square.
• On a particular session, I focused my power boosts toward physical attack/defense and chose every teeth possible that would increase my odds of landing on monsters of that variety.
• During a separate session, I built my character around loot caches and paired that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes whenever I opened a chest.

The strategic possibilities are somewhat constrained, but there's enough to work with to allow you to tweak numbers to your preference.

A Persistent Tension

Of course, it remains a game of chance. You constantly face the chance that you have an 80% chance to hit the square you want but ultimately choose a foe that would eliminate your remaining life. All selections is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you clear a floor out and decide when to press onward or when to move on to the next floor rather than testing fate.

Tools such as enemy-killing bombs help cut down the chance, just like some character abilities. An adventurer's special power, powered up by selecting four tiles, enables you to click on a column in place of a horizontal line for that move. By employing your cards right, you can hold that ability for the right moment to circumvent a perilous selection. There's a shocking level of strategy in the basic action of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is currently in its preview phase, and it has a final update to go before the final game is launched. Another playable adventurer and a new boss are scheduled to arrive sometime in January. The 1.0 release may not be much later, but the studio haven't announced a concrete launch day yet.

A Final Endorsement

Regardless of when it's fully released, you ought to put Sol Cesto in your sights. I have been positively obsessed with it, finding all of little secrets and saving my accumulated currency every session to access a constant flow of meta progression rewards, featuring new characters and items available for acquisition mid-attempt. As of now, I am yet to found the deepest level, and I get the feeling I'll still be attempting that goal when 1.0 finally hits. Sign me up for the entire experience.