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Following my time with well over 200 new releases this year, I am officially turning the page on 2025. My year-end list is published, and I feel content with the final results, accepting that plenty of excellent games may have dropped under the radar. Currently, my only job is to but sit back, take a short break, and maybe enjoy a refreshing hike in the— well, shoot, stumbled upon a brilliant title. And just like that, goodbye to my intentions!

A Surprising Contender Emerges

During my off-hours play, typically earmarked for a handful of quirky titles, I've come across potentially my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a classic dungeon crawler into a probability-fueled game of high stakes peril and prize. Take this as a preview for the in-the-know: If you take pride being aware of a game before it's cool, give Sol Cesto a try so you can punch a hole in your wallet for unique titles.

A Calculated Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's a departure from all I've previously experienced. The premise is that you need to explore a dungeon, going down level by level in search of the sun, which has vanished from the fantasy world. When you play, that makes for some recognizable genre framework. Pick a hero with their own attributes and skills, defeat enemies on every stage of monsters, pick up some permanent upgrades (represented as teeth), and vanquish a few area guardians. Straightforward, right!

The Distinctive Core Mechanic

The method by which you effectively complete a dungeon room, is unique. Each instance you start another stage, the game presents a 4x4 grid of boxes. Each square features a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To explore a room, you just select on one of the horizontal lines, but which square you select is up to chance.

You might see a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You start with a quarter likelihood of hitting any given square in a row.

Then, you'll chances are recalculated. So do you press your luck, or do you choose on a different row first and try to make less risky choices early? That's the tension between chance and safety at play in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing once you get an understanding of it.

Manipulating Probability

The meta-layer is that your percentages can be shaped over the course of a session by gathering teeth that modify the types of squares you're more likely to land on. For example, you might get a perk that will reduce the probability of landing on a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of getting a reward too.

• Developing a strategy is about tweaking the numbers to the utmost to have a improved likelihood at selecting the optimal square.
• In one run, I invested my power boosts toward physical attack/defense and picked as many teeth I could that would increase my odds of attracting me toward monsters aligned with that strength.
• During a separate session, I built my character around reward boxes and paired that with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies every time I secured loot.

The customization choices are not endless, but it provides ample to engage with to allow you to tweak the odds the way you want.

An Ever-Present Gamble

Unsurprisingly, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There remains the risk that you have a high probability to hit the square you want but end up landing on an enemy that would take out your remaining life. Each click is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you work through a stage and decide when to keep clicking or to proceed to the following level rather than testing fate.

Tools such as explosive devices help cut down the chance, as do some special skills. An adventurer's unique ability, activated once making four moves, lets gamers to click on a column instead of a row during that action. If you play this strategically, you can save that move for the right moment to circumvent a perilous selection. It's a surprising level of strategy in the basic action of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is remaining in its preview phase, and it has another update scheduled until the final game is unleashed. An additional hero and a fresh guardian are scheduled to arrive before the conclusion of January. The official version may not be long after, but the creators haven't committed to a specific release window yet.

A Concluding Thought

No matter when its 1.0 launch occurs, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I've been thoroughly captivated with it, uncovering each of hidden nuances and storing my run rewards in each run to access a constant flow of permanent unlocks, including additional heroes and items purchasable during a run. I still haven't found the deepest level, and I get the feeling I'll still be attempting that goal when 1.0 finally hits. I'm committed for the entire experience.