Having experienced well over 200 new releases this year, It's time to wrapping things up on 2025. My year-end list is live, and I feel content with the ultimate rankings, accepting that numerous fantastic releases likely fell through the cracks. At this point, it's plan is to but sit back, unplug a little, and perhaps take a pleasant stroll in the— well, shoot, stumbled upon a brilliant title. And just like that, goodbye to my intentions!
A Premature Front-Runner Appears
In my more off-hours play, typically earmarked for a handful of quirky titles, I've encountered what could be my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual roguelike for Windows PC that reimagines a classic dungeon crawler into a luck-based game of high stakes risk and reward. Consider this a hipster's insider tip: If you take pride in knowing about a game before it's popular, test out Sol Cesto so you can burn a spot in your indie credit card.
A Tactical Genre Subversion
Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's different from everything I've previously experienced. The premise is that you must venture into a dungeon, descending floor after floor in search of the sun, which has disappeared from the fantasy world. In practice, this results in some familiar roguelike structure. Pick a hero with their own attributes and skills, clear floor after floor of enemies, pick up some permanent upgrades (which are teeth), and overcome a few area guardians. Easy to grasp!
The Distinctive Gameplay Loop
How you effectively complete a dungeon room, is unique. Every time you begin a fresh level, you see 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 choose on one of the four rows, but which square you end up on is determined by luck.
You might see a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You begin with a quarter likelihood of selecting any given square in a row.
After that, the probabilities change. So do you take the risk, or do you choose on a different row first and try to make less risky choices early? This is the push-your-luck gameplay in action in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating when you acquire an understanding of it.
Influencing Chance
The meta-layer is that your probabilities can be influenced over the course of a session by picking up teeth that modify the types of squares you're more attracted to. To illustrate, you may obtain a perk that will lower your chances of landing on a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of getting a treasure chest too.
- Developing a strategy is about tweaking the numbers as best you can to have a improved likelihood at landing where you want.
- On a particular session, I put all my attribute improvements toward melee prowess and picked as many teeth possible that would increase my odds of being drawn to monsters of that variety.
- On a different attempt, I constructed my hero around loot caches and paired that with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters each time I claimed a reward.
The strategic possibilities are limited, but they are sufficient to experiment with to enable you to influence probabilities the way you want.
A Constant Tension
Naturally, it's still a game of chance. There's always the chance that you have a likely outcome to land on the square you want but ultimately choose on an enemy that would take out your final hit point. All selections is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you work through a stage and choose whether to keep clicking or to advance to the following level as opposed to pushing your luck.
Tools such as destructive ordnance help cut down the chance, as do some hero powers. An adventurer's special power, activated once selecting four tiles, enables you to click on a vertical line rather than a horizontal line on a turn. If you play your cards right, you can hold that ability for a crucial point to sidestep a dangerous choice. There's a shocking amount of nuance in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.
Looking Ahead
Sol Cesto is remaining in its preview phase, and it has another update planned until the full version is launched. A new character and a fresh guardian are planned for release by the end of January. The 1.0 release likely won't be long after, but the game's developers haven't set a concrete launch day yet.
A Concluding Endorsement
Whenever the complete game arrives, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I have been thoroughly captivated with it, uncovering each of little secrets and storing my run rewards every session to access a constant flow of permanent unlocks, featuring fresh adventurers and items I can buy while playing. I still haven't reached the bottom, and I get the feeling I'll still be working on that task when the official release drops. Count me in for the long haul.
