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Following my time with well over 200 new releases this year, I'm formally turning the page on 2025. My annual roundup is out in the world, and I feel content with the concluding selections, accepting that numerous stellar titles may have dropped under the radar. Now, there's plan is to other than unwind, unplug a little, and possibly go for a refreshing hike in the— ah crap, found another amazing experience. So much for my intentions!

An Early Favorite Surfaces

With my off-hours play, usually reserved for a handful of quirky titles, I've encountered what could be my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a conventional dungeon crawler into a probability-fueled game of high stakes risk and reward. Consider this a preview for the in-the-know: If you enjoy discovering a game before it's cool, test out Sol Cesto so you can punch a hole in your gaming budget.

A Tactical Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's different from everything I'm familiar with. The premise is that you need to explore a dungeon, going down level by level on a quest for the sun, which has gone missing from this mythical realm. When you play, this results in some standard crawl progression. Pick a hero with their own attributes and skills, fight through each level of monsters, collect some permanent upgrades (in the form of teeth), and defeat a few stage-ending champions. Simple enough!

The Unique Central System

How you effectively complete a dungeon room, is unique. Whenever you start another stage, the game presents a four-by-four matrix of boxes. Each square either contains a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To make a move, you choose on one of the horizontal lines, but the exact space you land in is a matter of probability.

You might see a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You begin with a one-in-four probability of landing on any given square in a row.

After that, the chances are recalculated. So do you go for it, or do you click on a safer line first and try to make safer moves early? This is the push-your-luck gameplay on display in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing once you get a feel for it.

Manipulating Probability

The roguelike twist is that your percentages can be shaped during an attempt by gathering teeth that alter which objects you're drawn toward. As an instance, you could acquire a perk that will lower your chances of hitting a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of landing on a reward too.

• Creating a build is about manipulating math to the utmost to have a better shot at selecting the optimal square.
• In one run, I focused my stat upgrades toward brute force and chose every 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 paired that with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies every time I claimed a reward.

The strategic possibilities are not endless, but it provides ample to engage with to allow you to tweak numbers the way you want.

An Ever-Present Gamble

Of course, it's still a game of chance. There remains the possibility that you have a likely outcome to hit the square you want but ultimately choose on an enemy that would take out your remaining life. Every move is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you work through a stage and determine if to keep clicking or to proceed to the subsequent stage instead of testing fate.

Consumables including explosive devices assist in minimizing the chance, similar to some character abilities. One hero's unique ability, charged after clearing four squares, allows players to choose a vertical line rather than a row for that move. If you play your cards right, you can hold that ability for an optimal time to sidestep a dangerous choice. There's a shocking level of strategy in the basic action of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is still in its preview phase, and it has a final update scheduled until the full version is launched. An additional hero and a new boss are planned for release sometime in January. The 1.0 release likely won't be far behind, but the studio haven't set a specific release window yet.

A Concluding Endorsement

No matter when the complete game arrives, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I have been completely engrossed with it, uncovering each of hidden nuances and banking my earned gold every session to access a constant flow of meta progression rewards, such as additional heroes and items available for acquisition mid-attempt. To this day, I have not found the deepest level, and I suspect I'll still be attempting that goal when the official release drops. Sign me up for the long haul.