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Following my time with more than 200 new releases this year, I'm formally wrapping things up on 2025. My annual roundup is live, and I am at peace with the concluding selections, despite being aware numerous fantastic releases probably slipped through the cracks. Currently, my only plan is to but sit back, take a short break, and possibly go for a pleasant stroll in the— ah crap, stumbled upon a amazing experience. And just like that, goodbye to my intentions!

An Early Front-Runner Appears

During my laid-back sessions, usually reserved for a selection of unusual games, I've discovered potentially my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that reimagines a conventional dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of major consequence risk and reward. Take this as a hipster's insider tip: If you enjoy in knowing about a game before it hits the mainstream, give Sol Cesto a try so you can make a dent in your indie credit card.

A Tactical Dungeon-Crawling Innovation

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's a departure from all I've ever played. The setup is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, descending floor after floor to find the sun, which has disappeared from the fantasy world. In practice, this results in some familiar roguelike structure. Choose an adventurer possessing unique attributes and skills, clear floor after floor of monsters, acquire some passive buffs (represented as teeth), and vanquish a few area guardians. Easy to grasp!

The Distinctive Central System

The way you truly navigate a area, however. Each instance you start another stage, you're shown a 4x4 grid of boxes. All spaces features a monster, a treasure chest, 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 a matter of probability.

You could encounter a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You initially will have a quarter likelihood of hitting a specific tile in a row.

Subsequently, your probabilities change. So do you take the risk, or do you click on a alternative option first and aim for less risky choices early? Herein lies the tension between chance and safety on display in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing after you develop a feel for 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 attracted to. For example, you might get a perk that will reduce the probability of encountering a trap, but will also decrease the odds of landing on a reward too.

• Crafting a loadout is about influencing the statistics as best you can to have a better shot at landing where you want.
• In one run, I focused my power boosts toward brute force and chose every teeth I could that would improve my probability of landing on monsters aligned with that strength.
• In another run, I built my character around reward boxes and paired that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes every time I claimed a reward.

The customization choices are not endless, but there's enough to work with to enable you to influence probabilities according to your strategy.

A Constant Tension

Naturally, it remains a game of chance. There remains the chance that you have a high probability to land on the preferred space but ultimately choose a foe that would take out your final hit point. Every move is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you clear a floor out and choose whether to keep clicking or when to move on to the subsequent stage rather than pushing your luck.

Consumables including explosive devices assist in minimizing the chance, just like some special skills. An adventurer's special power, activated once selecting four tiles, enables you to choose a vertical line instead of a horizontal line during that action. By employing this strategically, you can reserve that option for an optimal time to circumvent a perilous selection. There's a shocking amount of nuance in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is remaining in its preview phase, and it has a final update scheduled until the complete edition is launched. A new character and a additional end-level foe are expected to drop before the conclusion of January. The full launch probably isn't much later, but the creators haven't announced a specific release window yet.

A Concluding Endorsement

Whenever the complete game arrives, you should consider put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. For the past week, I've been completely engrossed with it, discovering its small details and saving my accumulated currency per attempt to access a constant flow of permanent unlocks, featuring additional heroes and items I can buy mid-attempt. To this day, I have not found the deepest level, and I get the feeling I'll still be pursuing that objective when 1.0 finally hits. Count me in for the complete journey.