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After playing well over 200 recent games this year, I'm formally wrapping things up on 2025. My annual roundup is live, and I'm satisfied with the ultimate rankings, accepting that numerous stellar titles probably slipped through the cracks. Currently, my only nothing for me to do except relax, unplug a little, and maybe enjoy a nice walk in the— ah crap, discovered one more amazing experience. There go my intentions!

An Early Contender Emerges

In my more off-hours play, usually reserved for a handful of quirky titles, I've discovered what could be my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a classic dungeon crawler into a luck-based game of major consequence danger and payoff. View this a preview for the in-the-know: If you relish being aware of a game before it hits the mainstream, give Sol Cesto a try so you can punch a hole in your indie credit card.

A Strategic Dungeon-Crawling Innovation

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's a departure from all I'm familiar with. The premise is that you need to explore a dungeon, descending floor after floor to find the sun, which has vanished from the fantasy world. In practice, this creates some recognizable genre framework. Pick a hero with their own stats and abilities, fight through each level of monsters, acquire some permanent upgrades (in the form of teeth), and overcome a few area guardians. Straightforward, right!

The Unique Central System

How you effectively complete a area, however. Every time you begin a fresh level, the game presents a sixteen-square board of boxes. Every tile holds a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To proceed, you choose on one of the four rows, but the exact space you land in is a matter of probability.

You may face a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You initially will have a quarter likelihood of selecting a specific tile in a row.

After that, the odds shift. The question becomes: Do you press your luck, or do you opt on a alternative option first and aim for less risky choices early? Herein lies the risk-reward dynamic at play in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing once you get its rhythm.

Manipulating Probability

The procedural hook 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. To illustrate, you might get a perk that will decrease your odds of hitting a trap, but will also decrease the odds of getting a reward too.

• Developing a strategy is about manipulating math as best you can to have a better shot at landing where you want.
• On a particular session, I focused my power boosts toward brute force and chose every teeth possible that would boost my chances of attracting me toward monsters aligned with that strength.
• In another run, I developed my adventurer around reward boxes and coupled it with a perk that would debuff nearby foes every time I secured loot.

The strategic possibilities are not endless, but it provides ample to work with to let you manipulate probabilities to your preference.

A Persistent Gamble

Of course, it remains a game of chance. There's always the possibility that you have an 80% chance to select the desired tile but end up landing a foe that would take out your remaining life. All selections is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you work through a stage and decide when to keep clicking or to proceed to the subsequent stage rather than risking it all.

Tools such as destructive ordnance aid in reducing the chance, similar to some hero powers. An adventurer's unique ability, charged after selecting four tiles, allows players to select a vertical line instead of a horizontal line during that action. If you play your cards right, you can hold that ability for the right moment to sidestep a dangerous choice. There's a shocking level of strategy in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is currently in early access, and it has another update planned until the final game is released. An additional hero and a additional end-level foe are planned for release before the conclusion of January. The 1.0 release likely won't be long after, but the creators haven't announced a specific release window yet.

A Final Thought

Regardless of when it's fully released, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your radar. For the past week, I've been thoroughly captivated with it, discovering its hidden nuances and saving my accumulated currency per attempt to access a constant flow of persistent upgrades, such as additional heroes and items I can buy while playing. I still haven't completed the dungeon, and I get the feeling I'll still be attempting that goal when the official release drops. I'm committed for the entire experience.