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Following my time with more than 200 fresh titles this year, It's time to closing the book on 2025. My annual roundup is live, and I'm satisfied with the ultimate rankings, despite being aware plenty of stellar titles likely fell through the cracks. Currently, my only nothing for me to do except relax, take a short break, and maybe enjoy a pleasant stroll in the— well, shoot, stumbled upon a brilliant title. And just like that, goodbye to my intentions!

An Early Contender Emerges

In my more casual gaming time, usually reserved for a handful of quirky titles, I've encountered what might become my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that reimagines a conventional labyrinth explorer into a chance-driven game of major consequence danger and payoff. View this a hipster's insider tip: If you enjoy in knowing about a game before it hits the mainstream, test out Sol Cesto so you can burn a spot in your gaming budget.

A Tactical Dungeon-Crawling Innovation

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's unlike anything I've ever played. The concept is that you need to explore a dungeon, descending floor after floor in search of the sun, which has disappeared from this mythical realm. In practice, this results in some standard crawl progression. Select a character possessing unique stats and abilities, defeat enemies on every stage of monsters, pick up some stat improvements (represented as teeth), and overcome a few area guardians. Straightforward, right!

The Distinctive Gameplay Loop

The method by which you truly navigate a dungeon room, however. Each instance you start another stage, the game presents a 4x4 grid of boxes. All spaces either contains a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To explore a room, you just select on one of the horizontal lines, but the specific tile you end up on is determined by luck.

You may face a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You initially will have a 25% chance of hitting any given square in a row.

Subsequently, your odds shift. So do you go for it, or do you opt on a different row first and try to make less risky choices early? Herein lies the push-your-luck gameplay in action in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing once you get an understanding of it.

Shaping the Odds

The meta-layer is that your odds can be manipulated during an attempt by picking up teeth that change what things you're more likely to land on. 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 reward too.

• Crafting a loadout is about influencing the statistics optimally to have a better shot at landing where you want.
• In one run, I put all my attribute improvements toward physical attack/defense and chose every teeth I could that would boost my chances of attracting me toward monsters with that damage type.
• On a different attempt, I developed my adventurer around loot caches and paired that with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies every time I opened a chest.

The build options are somewhat constrained, but it provides ample to engage with to enable you to influence numbers to your preference.

A Persistent Tension

Unsurprisingly, it's still a game of chance. There remains the risk that you have a likely outcome to land on the desired tile but ultimately choose a monster that would take out your last bit of health. All selections is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you clear a floor out and choose whether to continue selecting or to proceed to the subsequent stage instead of pushing your luck.

Tools such as destructive ordnance assist in minimizing the chance, similar to some character abilities. A particular character's unique ability, powered up by clearing four squares, allows players to select a column rather than a horizontal row for that move. By employing this move wisely, you can reserve that option for the right moment to avoid a risky decision. It's a surprising degree of depth in the basic action of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is currently in early access, and it has another update planned until the final game is unleashed. An additional hero and a additional end-level foe are expected to drop by the end of January. The official version probably isn't much later, but the creators haven't set a specific release window yet.

A Parting Recommendation

Whenever the complete game arrives, you might want to put Sol Cesto in your sights. I've been completely engrossed with it, finding all of little secrets and banking my earned gold per attempt to reveal a continuous trickle of persistent upgrades, featuring fresh adventurers and items available for acquisition during a run. As of now, I am yet to found the deepest level, and I have a sense I'll still be working on that task when the official release drops. I'm committed for the entire experience.