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Having experienced more than 200 recent games this year, It's time to wrapping things up on 2025. My annual roundup is published, and I feel content with the ultimate rankings, accepting that numerous excellent games may have dropped through the cracks. At this point, it's nothing for me to do but sit back, disconnect briefly, and possibly go for a refreshing hike in the— oh no, found another great game. And just like that, goodbye to my plans!

A Surprising Favorite Surfaces

With my laid-back sessions, typically earmarked for a handful of quirky titles, I've discovered potentially my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that deconstructs a classic dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of significant risk risk and reward. View this a preview for the in-the-know: 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 Tactical Dungeon-Crawling Innovation

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's unlike anything I'm familiar with. The setup is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper in search of the sun, which has vanished from its world. When you play, this creates some recognizable genre framework. Pick a hero with their own parameters and powers, clear floor after floor of foes, pick up some permanent upgrades (in the form of teeth), and overcome a few biome bosses. Straightforward, right!

The Novel Core Mechanic

How you actually clear a dungeon room, is unique. Whenever you begin a fresh level, the game presents a four-by-four matrix of boxes. All spaces features a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To explore a room, you just select on one of the four rows, but the specific tile you land in is determined by luck.

You may face a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You begin with a quarter likelihood of selecting a particular space in a row.

Then, you'll chances are recalculated. So do you press your luck, or do you click on a different row first and aim for more cautious selections early? This is the risk-reward dynamic in action in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing once you get a feel for it.

Shaping the Odds

The roguelike twist is that your percentages can be shaped through a run by collecting teeth that modify the types of squares you're more likely to land on. As an instance, you could acquire a perk that will reduce the probability of landing on a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of getting a reward too.

• Developing a strategy is about tweaking the numbers as best you can to have a higher chance at getting your desired outcome.
• During one attempt, I put all my stat upgrades toward physical attack/defense and chose every teeth possible that would improve my probability of attracting me toward monsters aligned with that strength.
• During a separate session, I built my character around reward boxes and combined that with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters whenever I secured loot.

The customization choices are not endless, but they are sufficient to work with to enable you to influence numbers the way you want.

A Constant Tension

Naturally, it's still a game of chance. You constantly face the risk that you have an 80% chance to land on the square you want but ultimately choose a monster that would deplete your last bit of health. Every move 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 following level as opposed to testing fate.

Consumables including enemy-killing bombs assist in minimizing the chance, as do some special skills. An adventurer's special power, charged after selecting four tiles, lets gamers to select a vertical column in place of a horizontal line on a turn. Should you use this move wisely, you can save that move for an optimal time to sidestep a dangerous choice. There's a shocking amount of nuance in the simple act of clicking.

The Road to 1.0

Sol Cesto is remaining in early access, and it has at least one more update scheduled before the full version is released. An additional hero and a new boss are scheduled to arrive before the conclusion of January. The official version likely won't be long after, but the studio haven't announced a specific release window yet.

A Parting Thought

No matter when its 1.0 launch occurs, you might want to put Sol Cesto in your sights. I have been completely engrossed with it, uncovering each of little secrets and saving my accumulated currency per attempt to access a constant flow of meta progression rewards, including new characters and items I can buy mid-attempt. To this day, I have not reached the bottom, and I get the feeling I will remain pursuing that objective when the full version launches. Sign me up for the complete journey.