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Having experienced in excess of 200 new releases this year, I'm formally turning the page on 2025. My year-end list is live, and I am at peace with the concluding selections, despite being aware plenty of stellar titles may have dropped under the radar. Now, there's nothing for me to do except relax, take a short break, and perhaps take a nice walk in the— ah crap, discovered one more brilliant title. So much for my intentions!

An Early Front-Runner Appears

With my casual gaming time, typically earmarked for a selection of unusual games, I've come across what might become my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a classic dungeon crawler into a luck-based game of significant risk risk and reward. Consider this a preview for the in-the-know: If you relish being aware of a game before it hits the mainstream, sample Sol Cesto so you can make a dent in your indie credit card.

A Calculated Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's unlike anything I'm familiar with. The premise is that you must venture into a dungeon, going down level by level to find the sun, which has vanished from this mythical realm. Mechanically, this results in some recognizable genre framework. Select a character with their own attributes and skills, fight through each level of monsters, acquire some permanent upgrades (in the form of teeth), and defeat a few stage-ending champions. Simple enough!

The Distinctive Gameplay Loop

The way you actually clear a chamber, however. Each instance you enter a new floor, you see a sixteen-square board of boxes. All spaces either contains a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To make a move, you simply click on one of the horizontal lines, but the exact space you end up on is a matter of probability.

You could encounter a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You begin with a one-in-four probability of hitting a specific tile in a row.

After that, the probabilities change. The question becomes: Do you take the risk, or do you click on a alternative option first and aim for more cautious selections early? That's the risk-reward dynamic at play in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing after you develop its rhythm.

Shaping the Odds

The meta-layer is that your probabilities can be influenced during an attempt by collecting teeth that change what things you're drawn toward. To illustrate, you may obtain a perk that will lower your chances of hitting a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of getting a treasure chest too.

• Crafting a loadout is about tweaking the numbers to the utmost to have a better shot at getting your desired outcome.
• On a particular session, I put all my attribute improvements toward melee prowess and picked as many teeth possible that would increase my odds of landing on monsters with that damage type.
• In another run, I developed my adventurer around reward boxes and coupled it with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies each time I secured loot.

The build options are limited, but there's enough to experiment with to allow you to tweak numbers the way you want.

A Persistent Risk

Naturally, it remains a game of chance. There's always the risk that you have a high probability to land on the desired tile but ultimately choose on an enemy that would deplete your remaining life. All selections is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you clear a floor out and determine if to press onward or to advance to the subsequent stage rather than risking it all.

Tools such as enemy-killing bombs assist in minimizing the chance, as do some special skills. An adventurer's signature move, charged after clearing four squares, enables you to choose a column in place of a horizontal line during that action. If you play your cards right, you can save that move for a crucial point to avoid a risky decision. You'll find an astonishing degree of depth in the basic action of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is remaining in development, and it has at least one more update to go until the full version is unleashed. A new character and a new boss are scheduled to arrive before the conclusion of January. The official version likely won't be much later, but the game's developers haven't announced a final date yet.

A Parting Endorsement

Regardless of when the complete game arrives, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I've been thoroughly captivated with it, finding all of small details and banking my earned gold per attempt to unlock a steady stream of persistent upgrades, such as additional heroes and items I can buy mid-attempt. As of now, I am yet to reached the bottom, and I get the feeling I'll still be pursuing that objective when the official release drops. I'm committed for the long haul.