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Following my time with well over 200 fresh titles this year, It's time to turning the page on 2025. My best-of compilation is published, and I am at peace with the concluding selections, even knowing numerous excellent games probably slipped by the wayside. Currently, my only nothing for me to do but sit back, take a short break, and possibly go for a refreshing hike in the— well, shoot, found another great game. So much for my peaceful respite!

A Premature Contender Emerges

In my more laid-back sessions, typically earmarked for a selection of unusual games, I've discovered what could be my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a traditional dungeon crawler into a probability-fueled game of high stakes risk and reward. View this a hipster's insider tip: If you relish discovering a game before it's cool, test out Sol Cesto so you can punch a hole in your gaming budget.

A Strategic Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's different from everything I've ever played. The premise is that you must venture into a dungeon, descending floor after floor to find the sun, which has vanished from this mythical realm. In practice, this creates some familiar roguelike structure. Select a character who has stats and abilities, clear floor after floor of foes, acquire some passive buffs (which are teeth), and defeat a few area guardians. Straightforward, right!

The Distinctive Gameplay Loop

The way you truly navigate a area, however. Whenever you start another stage, the game presents a sixteen-square board of boxes. Each square holds a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To explore a room, you choose on one of the four rows, but which square you land in is a matter of probability.

You may face a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You start with a quarter likelihood of hitting a specific tile in a row.

After that, the chances are recalculated. So do you go for it, or do you choose on a alternative option first and try to make less risky choices early? This is the risk-reward dynamic at play in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing when you acquire a feel for it.

Influencing Chance

The procedural hook is that your probabilities can be influenced during an attempt by picking up teeth that alter which objects you're more likely to land on. As an instance, you may obtain a perk that will lower your chances of landing on a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of finding a reward too.

• Creating a build is about tweaking the numbers to the utmost to have a better shot at selecting the optimal square.
• On a particular session, I invested my attribute improvements toward melee prowess and selected all the teeth I could that would improve my probability of being drawn to monsters aligned with that strength.
• During a separate session, I developed my adventurer around treasure chests and coupled it with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies whenever I claimed a reward.

The customization choices are limited, but they are sufficient to work with to let you manipulate probabilities the way you want.

A Persistent Risk

Unsurprisingly, it remains a game of chance. There remains the risk that you have a likely outcome to land on the desired tile but end up landing on an enemy that would eliminate your remaining life. Every move is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you clear a floor out and choose whether to keep clicking or to proceed to the following level rather than pushing your luck.

Tools such as destructive ordnance assist in minimizing the chance, similar to some character abilities. A particular character's signature move, activated once selecting four tiles, allows players to click on a vertical column in place of a horizontal row for that move. By employing this strategically, you can save that move for a crucial point to circumvent a perilous selection. You'll find an astonishing amount of nuance in the basic action of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is still in its preview phase, and it has a final update scheduled before the final game is launched. A new character and a new boss are planned for release by the end of January. The 1.0 release likely won't be long after, but the studio haven't committed to a specific release window yet.

A Concluding Endorsement

Regardless of when the complete game arrives, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your radar. I have been completely engrossed with it, discovering its hidden nuances and banking my earned gold in each run to unlock a steady stream of persistent upgrades, featuring fresh adventurers and items I can buy during a run. I still haven't completed the dungeon, and I have a sense I'll still be working on that task when 1.0 finally hits. Count me in for the complete journey.