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Having experienced in excess of 200 new releases this year, I am officially closing the book on 2025. My annual roundup is published, and I feel content with the concluding selections, accepting that numerous stellar titles likely fell under the radar. Currently, my only plan is to other than unwind, disconnect briefly, and possibly go for a refreshing hike in the— oh no, discovered one more great game. There go my plans!

A Premature Contender Emerges

In my more casual gaming time, typically earmarked for a few oddball curiosities, I've encountered potentially my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a classic dungeon crawler into a probability-fueled game of high stakes risk and reward. Consider this a hipster's insider tip: If you relish in knowing about a game before it's popular, sample Sol Cesto so you can punch a hole in your wallet for unique titles.

A Calculated Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's unlike anything I'm familiar with. The setup is that you need to explore a dungeon, going down level by level in search of the sun, which has gone missing from the fantasy world. When you play, this results in some standard crawl progression. Choose an adventurer with their own attributes and skills, fight through each level of foes, collect some permanent upgrades (in the form of teeth), and overcome a few area guardians. Simple enough!

The Novel Gameplay Loop

The way you truly navigate a dungeon room, is unique. Each instance you begin a fresh level, you see a four-by-four matrix of boxes. Every tile either contains a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To make a move, you choose on one of the horizontal lines, but the specific tile you land in is up to chance.

You could encounter a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You begin with a one-in-four probability of selecting a particular space in a row.

Then, you'll chances are recalculated. So do you press your luck, or do you opt on a safer line first and try to make more cautious selections early? That's the tension between chance and safety at play in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating after you develop a feel for it.

Influencing Chance

The procedural hook is that your odds can be manipulated during an attempt by gathering teeth that modify the types of squares you're more attracted to. For example, you could acquire a perk that will reduce the probability of landing on a trap, but will also decrease the odds of finding a reward too.

• Creating a build is about manipulating math as best you can to have a better shot at landing where you want.
• On a particular session, I focused my stat upgrades toward melee prowess and chose every teeth possible that would increase my odds of being drawn to monsters of that variety.
• In another run, I developed my adventurer around treasure chests and coupled it with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies whenever I claimed a reward.

The strategic possibilities are somewhat constrained, but it provides ample to experiment with to let you manipulate numbers according to your strategy.

A Persistent Risk

Naturally, it's still a game of chance. There remains the possibility that you have an 80% chance to land on the preferred space but end up landing a foe that would deplete your final hit point. All selections is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you work through a stage and decide when to press onward or when to move on to the next floor rather than pushing your luck.

Consumables including enemy-killing bombs aid in reducing the chance, just like some character abilities. One hero's special power, activated once selecting four tiles, enables you to click on a vertical line rather than a horizontal row on a turn. Should you use this strategically, you can save that move for an optimal time to circumvent a perilous selection. There's a shocking level of strategy in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is currently in development, and it has at least one more update scheduled before the complete edition is launched. An additional hero and a new boss are scheduled to arrive by the end of January. The full launch probably isn't far behind, but the studio haven't committed to a concrete launch day yet.

A Final Recommendation

Regardless of when it's fully released, you ought to put Sol Cesto in your sights. I've been completely engrossed with it, discovering its hidden nuances and banking my earned gold in each run to access a constant flow of meta progression rewards, such as new characters and items I can buy mid-attempt. I still haven't found the deepest level, and I get the feeling I will remain attempting that goal when the official release drops. I'm committed for the complete journey.