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Having experienced more than 200 fresh titles this year, I am officially turning the page on 2025. My annual roundup is live, and I am at peace with the final results, despite being aware plenty of excellent games likely fell under the radar. At this point, it's nothing for me to do but sit back, take a short break, and perhaps take a refreshing hike in the— ah crap, found another amazing experience. There go my intentions!

An Early Contender Emerges

During my casual gaming time, typically earmarked for a selection of unusual games, I've come across what might become my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a traditional dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of high stakes risk and reward. Take this as a hipster's insider tip: If you enjoy being aware of a game before it's popular, test out Sol Cesto so you can make a dent in your wallet for unique titles.

A Tactical Dungeon-Crawling Innovation

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's different from everything I'm familiar with. The concept is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, descending floor after floor to find the sun, which has vanished from the fantasy world. When you play, that makes for some recognizable genre framework. Choose an adventurer possessing unique stats and abilities, defeat enemies on every stage of monsters, acquire some passive buffs (in the form of teeth), and defeat a few biome bosses. Easy to grasp!

The Distinctive Gameplay Loop

How you effectively complete a chamber, however. Every time you start another stage, you're shown a four-by-four matrix of boxes. Every tile holds a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To make a move, you just select on one of the four rows, but the specific tile you end up on is determined by luck.

You could encounter a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You begin with a 25% chance of hitting any given square in a row.

After that, the probabilities change. So do you go for it, or do you opt on a different row first and try to make less risky choices early? That's the tension between chance and safety at play in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing when you acquire its rhythm.

Shaping the Odds

The procedural hook is that your probabilities can be influenced through a run by gathering teeth that modify the types of squares you're more attracted to. For example, you may obtain a perk that will reduce the probability of landing on a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of finding a reward too.

• Developing a strategy is about influencing the statistics optimally to have a improved likelihood at getting your desired outcome.
• During one attempt, I put all my attribute improvements toward melee prowess and selected all the teeth possible that would boost my chances of being drawn to monsters aligned with that strength.
• In another run, I built my character around reward boxes and coupled it with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters whenever I secured loot.

The build options are limited, but they are sufficient to experiment with to let you manipulate numbers according to your strategy.

A Constant Gamble

Unsurprisingly, it remains a game of chance. There's always the risk that you have a high probability to hit the square you want but end up landing a foe that would deplete your final hit point. Every move is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you navigate a level and determine if to continue selecting or to advance to the next floor instead of risking it all.

Consumables including destructive ordnance help cut down the chance, just like some hero powers. An adventurer's unique ability, charged after clearing four squares, enables you to choose a column instead of a horizontal row for that move. Should you use this move wisely, you can hold that ability for an optimal time to avoid a risky decision. It's a surprising degree of depth in the simple act of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is currently in early access, and it has another update scheduled until the final game is launched. An additional hero and a fresh guardian are planned for release sometime in January. The 1.0 release probably isn't much later, but the creators haven't announced a concrete launch day yet.

A Final Recommendation

Whenever its 1.0 launch occurs, you should consider put Sol Cesto in your sights. For the past week, I've been positively obsessed with it, finding all of small details and storing my run rewards in each run to access a constant flow of persistent upgrades, including fresh adventurers and items available for acquisition during a run. As of now, I am yet to reached the bottom, and I have a sense I'll still be pursuing that objective when 1.0 finally hits. Sign me up for the complete journey.