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Having experienced more than 200 fresh titles this year, It's time to turning the page on 2025. My year-end list is out in the world, and I am at peace with the final results, despite being aware plenty of fantastic releases likely fell by the wayside. At this point, it's nothing for me to do except relax, disconnect briefly, and maybe enjoy a nice walk in the— oh no, found another amazing experience. So much for my intentions!

An Early Favorite Surfaces

With my off-hours play, typically earmarked for a selection of unusual games, I've come across what could be my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that deconstructs a conventional labyrinth explorer into a luck-based 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 punch a hole in your gaming budget.

A Calculated Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's a departure from all I've ever played. The setup is that you need to explore a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper to find the sun, which has vanished from this mythical realm. When you play, this results in some familiar roguelike structure. Pick a hero with their own parameters and powers, clear floor after floor of monsters, acquire some passive buffs (in the form of teeth), and overcome a few area guardians. Simple enough!

The Unique Central System

The way you truly navigate a area, is unique. Every time you start another stage, you're shown a 4x4 grid of boxes. Each square holds a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To make a move, you simply click on one of the four rows, but the exact space you end up on is determined by luck.

You might see a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You begin with a quarter likelihood of selecting any given square in a row.

Then, you'll odds shift. So do you take the risk, or do you choose on a alternative option first and aim for less risky choices early? That's the push-your-luck gameplay in action in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating after you develop an understanding of it.

Manipulating Probability

The meta-layer is that your odds can be manipulated over the course of a session by collecting teeth that alter which objects you're more likely to land on. As an instance, you might get a perk that will decrease your odds of hitting a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of landing on a treasure chest too.

• Developing a strategy is about tweaking the numbers optimally to have a improved likelihood at selecting the optimal square.
• During one attempt, I invested my attribute improvements toward melee prowess and picked as many teeth I could that would increase my odds of landing on monsters of that variety.
• On a different attempt, I built my character around treasure chests and combined that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes each time I secured loot.

The customization choices are limited, but they are sufficient to engage with to allow you to tweak probabilities the way you want.

A Persistent Gamble

Unsurprisingly, it's still a game of chance. There remains the chance that you have a high probability to land on the preferred space but wind up hitting a foe that would eliminate your remaining life. Every move is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you work through a stage and choose whether to press onward or to proceed to the subsequent stage as opposed to testing fate.

Items like destructive ordnance help cut down the chance, as do some special skills. One hero's signature move, powered up by clearing four squares, allows players to select a vertical column in place of a row on a turn. If you play this move wisely, you can reserve that option for a crucial point to sidestep a dangerous choice. It's a surprising level of strategy in the seemingly straightforward task 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 launched. An additional hero and a additional end-level foe are planned for release sometime in January. The full launch may not be much later, but the creators haven't committed to a specific release window yet.

A Final Thought

Whenever the complete game arrives, you might want to put Sol Cesto in your sights. I have been positively obsessed with it, uncovering each of small details and storing my run rewards per attempt to unlock a steady stream of persistent upgrades, such as 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 continue pursuing that objective when 1.0 finally hits. Count me in for the complete journey.