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Having experienced more than 200 recent games this year, It's time to turning the page on 2025. My best-of compilation is published, and I'm satisfied with the final results, accepting that a host of fantastic releases likely fell through the cracks. Now, there's nothing for me to do other than unwind, unplug a little, and maybe enjoy a nice walk in the— oh no, found another brilliant title. So much for my plans!

An Early Contender Emerges

With my laid-back sessions, usually reserved for a handful of quirky titles, I've discovered what might become my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that deconstructs a conventional dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of significant risk peril and prize. Take this as a hipster's insider tip: If you take pride being aware of a game before it's popular, sample Sol Cesto so you can burn a spot in your wallet for unique titles.

A Calculated Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's unlike anything I'm familiar with. The setup is that you must venture into a dungeon, going down level by level on a quest for the sun, which has vanished from the fantasy world. In practice, that makes for some recognizable genre framework. Pick a hero who has attributes and skills, defeat enemies on every stage of monsters, acquire some stat improvements (which are teeth), and overcome a few area guardians. Straightforward, right!

The Distinctive Core Mechanic

How you actually clear a area, is unique. Whenever you begin a fresh level, you're shown a four-by-four matrix of boxes. Every tile features a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To make a move, you just select on one of the four rows, but the exact space you land in is determined by luck.

You could encounter a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You initially will have a one-in-four probability of selecting a particular space in a row.

Subsequently, your probabilities change. The question becomes: Do you go for it, or do you choose on a safer line first and aim for less risky choices early? Herein lies the push-your-luck gameplay at play in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing after you develop a feel for it.

Manipulating Probability

The roguelike twist is that your percentages can be shaped during an attempt by picking up teeth that modify the types of squares you're more attracted to. For example, you could acquire a perk that will lower your chances of encountering a trap, but will also decrease the odds of finding a treasure chest too.

• Creating a build is about manipulating math optimally to have a improved likelihood at selecting the optimal square.
• During one attempt, I put all my power boosts toward brute force and chose every teeth possible that would increase my odds of being drawn to monsters with that damage type.
• In another run, I constructed my hero around treasure chests and coupled it with a perk that would debuff nearby foes every time I claimed a reward.

The strategic possibilities are limited, but they are sufficient to engage with to allow you to tweak numbers the way you want.

A Constant Gamble

Unsurprisingly, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There's always the risk that you have a high probability to hit the preferred space but end up landing a foe that would take out your last bit of health. All selections is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you clear a floor out and determine if to continue selecting or to proceed to the subsequent stage rather than pushing your luck.

Tools such as enemy-killing bombs help cut down the chance, similar to some character abilities. One hero's unique ability, powered up by selecting four tiles, lets gamers to click on a vertical line rather than a row on a turn. Should you use your cards right, you can hold that ability for a crucial point to sidestep a dangerous choice. It's a surprising amount of nuance in the basic action of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is currently in development, and it has a final update scheduled before the complete edition is released. Another playable adventurer and a new boss are scheduled to arrive sometime in January. The official version likely won't be far behind, but the studio haven't committed to a final date yet.

A Concluding Thought

Regardless of when its 1.0 launch occurs, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I've been thoroughly captivated with it, uncovering each of small details and storing my run rewards per attempt to reveal a continuous trickle of permanent unlocks, such as fresh adventurers and items available for acquisition mid-attempt. To this day, I have not completed the dungeon, and I have a sense I'll still be pursuing that objective when the full version launches. Count me in for the complete journey.